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Stop the Madness!!


phir

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Hey guys, just signed up to be able to post this, i've read this forum for a few years seeing how you guys go abaout your carp fishing and techniques that might work over here.

 

I'm not here to try and change your minds but just thought an Australian perspective may give some balance. I'm mid 30's have grown up fishing inland in the murray darling basin. Caught more carp than i could ever count, occasionally a golden perch (also known as yellowbellly or callop) never caught a Murray cod in my 25 years of fishing and native catfish (tandanus tandanus) are extinct in this part of the world now. 

 

I enjoy catching carp, however it is sad to see the river in it's current state. Murray Cod, a species who grow to well over a metre are scare. Golden perch are surviving but  by no means thriving. Carp are believed to be 80 - 90% of the total biomass in the river, that's a huge amount in 40 odd years. Carp have been here a lot longer but flooding in the 70's is what led to their massive spread in range.

 

As much as i enjoy catching carp, seeing their numbers being significantly reduced by this virus would be a huge positive for australia. restocking the catfish and allowing golden perch and Murray cod to recover to me is a great outcome. Carp will still be around, there will never be 100% wipe out, i assume those  fish that are resistant to the virus would be more likely to grow larger, however i expect the laws regarding returning them to the water alive will remain in place.

 

I note that Aussie fisherman have got a bad name in this forum, it's to be expected with Aussie attitudes to carp on a carp forum, but to my mind w're being short changed. Catch and release fishing has grown remarkably, very few murray cod are taken for the plate now with most being treated as well as you guys treat your carp. Perch are still often taken for the table but not in the quantities they once were, greed has diminished and sustainability is more prescient in the minds of our fisherman than ever before.

 

Personally I agree with the carp herpes virus being released in australia. I'd love to see the day when Aussies are travelling to the UK for that trophy shot with a 30+ carp, and uk fisherman go home with stopries of the 110cm+ cod that weighed as much as their wife. I also note our countries responsibility to keep the virus contained to our shores, a responsibility somewhat shared with foreign travellers heading home. If any country can manage this it's australia with our relative isolation.

 

In closing, i guess if anything don't just see this a carp issue, see it as an environmental issue. If you end up on the other side of the argument to me thats fine, i just think it's important to see it through the right lense.

 

and as an aside the earlier post about Australia'a record with introduced species is a touch misleading. Many of those species were released before Australian federation by British citizens in British colonies (including rabbits, foxes and carp). I'm not looking to start a big argument here as we have a ;largely shared history and ahve made probably just as many huge mistakes ourselves. For those interested in successful biological controls in Australia, myxomatosis, calicivirus and the prickly pear moth are the success stories we've had. The Cane Toad probably the most disastrous.

 

sorry for the long winded post, just hoping to add to the discussion from what I imagine is a very different perspective to most on this site

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bigdog, i think that your post is a good one, it certainly puts your perspective on the for or against argument from someone on the ground.

do you have any idea what the ambient water temp is in the murray darling basin? my reason for asking this is the fact that if the water temps reach as high as they did in 2005-2006 there may be a problem albiet one that should have been considered by whoever researched using the KHV as a mass culling method and that is that the effects of the virus are nulled in temperatures around 24-30 deg F (75-80C).

it would be interesting to know what the temps are this year.

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BigDog23 you seem to be a victim of the dribble which has been fed to the australian public for decades regarding the impact of carp.

Carp are easy to blame for the sad state of australian freshwater species.

 

The truth is that decades of mismanagement of waterways has resulted in what you see now. Carp are an adaptive species which can easily survive the poor conditions created by erosion, pollution and deliberate alteration of natural flows, and that is why they have flourished. They have nothing to do with muddy water, or how do you explain the crystal clear lakes in Europe and other places like south africa and america which are full of carp?

 

When the Koi Herpes Virus is released as planned in 2018 millions of of dead carp will quickly overwhelm the meagre freshwater supplies, oxygen levels will fall rapidly under the influence of rotting fish and native species will be wiped out. The water will quickly become unfit for any domestic use. The puny $15 million allocated to the cleanup will come nowhere close to what is needed. After about a week dead fish sink to the bottom and then it will be too late. The rumors of mobilizing locals to pick up putrefying rotting fish carcasses is a fantastical dream.

The KHV is highly virulent and spreads very quickly. Mortaility is within one week.

I don't think the release of a new organism into waterways is the solution. They tried it with Myxamatosis in rabbits and it has not worked. They tried it with cane toads to control the native cane beetle and it has been a catastrophe. Carp has been in australia for 150 years and is now deeply entrenched in the local eco-system. As you say it makes up most of the biomass.
What will the effect on wildlife (birds, other predatory fish species, animals) be if a well-established species is removed? No research has been done, no projections are available.

In addition to all that, if the virus escapes to Europe the effect on the billion dollar carp fishing industry will be calamitous. And let's not forget Asia where carp is a major food source. If KHV becomes widespread in Australian freshwater as planned the likelihood for this happening becomes much more substantial.

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Guest Swamptrout

I agree with your post 100% BigDog23. But I'm going to be buttered on both sides on this one, as I have to agree with phir in relation to mismanagement of some of our waterways.

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Load of Tosh ! Think we all know what your convict jibes were about .

Trying to back down on them with a story of one disgruntled Australian pathetic.

I can't stand race jibes!

We have Australian friends every other year come and visit us, if you think all Australians think they live in a prison, so it's OK to call them convicts you are very miss guided.

 

And as for newmarket liking your post that doesn't surprise me one bit either. Sad very sad .

I've left it a week to respond to this in the hope that somebody on here with some clout would delete the last paragraph .

I'm sure you know already anyway but , for the benefit of everybody else , I reported your post to admin because I thought , and still do think that that last paragraph is bang out of order .

 

Whether I considered the initial Cyborx post to be mildly amusing by way of tongue in cheek is neither here nor there to anybody else and if there had been a 'found the post to be mildly amusing' button then I would have mildly amused it ....

In its absence the like button was the nearest option .

 

I reported it , as I say , in the hope that admin/mods would remove the uncalled for snide comment but a week on its become obvious that THAT isn't going to happen and I'm not surprised about THAT either which would have saved me the trouble of posting In an argument I had no intention of getting involved in .

 

Sad . Very sad.

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i clicked the like button on the above post out of admiration for Tim as he had the presence of mind to withhold his ire, the patience to wait a week and the sheer balls to stand up and say something when no one, thats NO one in a position to do something about it has done.

also now that the person responsible for the snide remark is only lurking he wont accuse me of exhibiting bro love :wink:

 

sad, very sad

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But neither is the three letter word for homosexual or the 3 letter word for boobies beginning with t and ending with t but it blocks them out so I'm as puzzled as Neal and I sure haven't been drinking.....yet...... Oooooh go on then a cider will go down lovely

 

 

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

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Guest Swamptrout

I have read some of the remarks posted on this topic, Myself I'm a true blue Aussie and proud of it, my ancestors were convicts (maybe some still are), I have quite a few friends from the UK, I'm not racist in any way, and I don't  give a rats about politics. I believe their will always be a difference of opinion between the UK and Australia on carp. But they are in plague proportion over here and something needs to be done.   

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