In popular culture, the concept of ‘let’s do a study’ is mocked mercilessly. It’s portrayed as a way big corporations and governments can avoid actually doing something to address a problem. Sometimes the cynicism is well placed, but when it comes to the plight of our wild trout fisheries in eastern Victoria, research – and good, long-term research – is both critical and long overdue.
A wild brown trout from the King River. We love catching them, but we know relatively little about what makes wild King River trout stocks thrive – and what doesn’t.
A few years ago a friend was farming cattle on a remote property in the Victorian high country (stick with me here!) No one actually lived there, but over lots of visits he observed a poor survival rate among the calves. Did he go and buy a few dozen young cattle to replace the lost ones at a cost of several thousand dollars and hope for the best? Of course not. He needed to work out what was causing the losses. Was there a lack shelter for the calves during cold, wet weather so exposure was killing them? Did they (or the nursing cows) have enough to eat? Was someone stealing them? Were there actually more calves surviving, but hiding on the more rugged parts of the property?
Eventually, after much investigation, my friend discovered wild dogs were killing the calves. By constructing a protective electric fence and backing this up with regular patrols, the problem was mostly solved. The cattle soon calved again and the farm reached its carrying capacity – and all without spending a cent buying new stock.
The mid reaches of the Delatite River fish very well sometimes, but poorly at other times. Why?
My analogy may not be perfect, but much of the same logic applies to a wild trout fishery. If we believe there are not enough fish, we need to identify:
- The extent of the problem (for example, is it certain rivers or even certain parts of rivers that are particularly depleted?)
- What’s causing this lack of trout?
- Can we do anything about it? (Hope so!)
- And if so, what?
The Steavenson River just a year after the Black Saturday fires. How is it that our wild trout can recover so well from a disaster like that, yet sometimes struggle under seemingly less threatening conditions?
That is why the program just announced by the Victorian government, to be implemented by Fisheries, is such good news. The $890,000 program (over half of which will be funded by your Recreational Fishing Licence revenue) will run for three years and include:
- Radio tracking Delatite River trout to better understand how trout move around in a river system, when they move and maybe even why they move. To date, our knowledge on this crucial aspect of wild trout behaviour in north-east streams has been speculation at best, so information gathered here should really help with trout fishery management on many other eastern Victorian streams.
- Stocking of sections of the Howqua and upper Goulburn rivers with marked hatchery trout so that subsequent surveys can assess the impacts of stocking on the overall fishery.
- Intensive study over 3 years of wild trout populations in a dozen of our most important wild trout streams to monitor things like natural recruitment success, growth rates, population structure (big fish vs little fish) and so on.
- Creel surveys to monitor angler catches. Among other things, along with the research above, this will help decide if changes need to be made to trout fishing regulations.
Wanted: more wild Howqua rainbows like this one! But what’s the best way to get them?
The knowledge gathered from this program will give us the best chance in a long time to manage our precious wild trout fisheries in the best possible way. In his editorial in the latest issue of FlyLife, Rob Sloane, one of our foremost trout management experts, bemoans the lack of trout fishery research conducted these days. To paraphrase Rob’s summation, when it comes to the question ‘what’s happening to Australian trout fisheries?’ the answer is usually, nobody knows. In Victoria at least, maybe we will know at last.
