Fishing for Snapper
I have never enjoyed fishing much, hence have hardly tired my hand. Last time was in the Mary River, NT. Wyn and I were catching barramundi, Wyn large ones, under the tuition of a mate, Jonno.
He wasn’t having any luck, had started in near darkness, a little before we arrived. He hadn’t even caught a bream to his surprise.
The Commonwealth Government’s annual report on the state of Australia’s fish resources (2011) states that 13.5% of fish stocks are overfished or are being fished too heavily, and the status of 28% is unknown. But commercial and recreational fishers talk of much less fish in the sea now.
“Up before dawn, bleary eyed, getting dragged along by the old man
walking North Beach towards Station Creek down to the old wooden boat,
row down to the mouth, and then up the North Beach, fishing till about,
I don’t know, nine o’clock, and coming back with bag loads of fish.
They wouldn’t come home unless they had sixty or seventy whiting each,
and that was just the norm.” Bob Edgar poem. See Solitary Islands project.
And now WA is culling sharks, an ineffective, expensive knee-jerk response to a few tragic events.
