Download the Chair’s Report 2010.

Download letter from Chairman re TGALT and AAT.

The 2010-11 angling season starts on Saturday 7 August, with the traditional opening of brown trout waters. Rainbow waters will remain closed until Saturday 2 October this year.

Here are the current guidelines issued by the Inland Fisheries Service for locals and visitors alike.

Get a Licence!

You require a current angling licence to fish at any open inland water in Tasmania (including farm dams on private property), except at a registered private fishery where you generally pay to fish.

You can purchase or renew an angling licence by visiting a licence agent (at major tackle stores or any Service Tasmania shop). Licences can also be purchased or renewed online

Angling licences range in price from a full season adult licence at $66.50 to a short term weekend licence for $20.

The full season licence offers anglers the best value for money; being a 12 month licence with the opportunity to fish every day of the year; and with significant discounts for juniors (80% less at $12.00), pensioners (45% less at $36.50) and seniors (25% off at $53.00).

Other benefits include the convenience of being mailed a renewal form each year before the start of the season, which contains a durable licence card.

The Service also targets full season licence holders with information and special offers such as the automatic entry into competitions to win prizes.

This year, we are repeating the offer of free entry to the Salmon Ponds on presentation of a full season licence card and also a voucher, mailed out with the renewal notice, for a free weekend licence to ‘Take a Mate Fishing’.

Know the Rules!

There are rules and regulations that govern inland fishing in Tasmania and apply to individual waters. They cover seasons and times, bag and size limits, angling methods and boating. The general rules that apply to most waters are:

• an open season in line with brown trout waters from 7/8/10 to 1/5/11
• open to all methods of angling (fly, artificial lure and bait fishing)
• a bag limit of 12 fish
• a minimum fish size limit of 220 mm in length.

Waters that are an exception to these rules, such as waters open all year round, rainbow waters, waters closed to fishing at all times, and all waters in the Western Lakes area are listed in the Tasmanian Fishing Code 2010-11, which is provided for free with your licence.

You can also search the regulations applying to individual waters by visiting the IFS Waters Database.

Of special note is the closure of Lake Sorell this season under the Inland Fisheries (Delay or Prevention of Spread of Controlled Fish) Order 2003.

This is due to an outbreak of juvenile carp in Lake Sorell in 2009-10 and to assist the Service in intensifying its effort to control the population during 2010-11.

• Gunns Marsh Road (Jonah Bay, Arthurs Lake) is now open to the public, enabling anglers to access the area and set up camping sites for the opening of the season on Saturday.
• Opening and closing times for the boom gate at Huntsman Lake will be 6.00am and 5.00pm from Saturday 7 August.
• Lake Sorell is closed to fishing and boating this season, or any other activity that might result in contact with the water.

Updated August 4, 2010

More funding for carp eradication teams

By SARAH GRAHAM | Minister for Primary Industries and Water, Bryan Green announced that an additional $400,000 will be provided for the Carp Management Program in this year’s State Budget.

The Service has invested heavily in the control of carp at lakes Sorell and Crescent over the past 15 years. It has received financial support primarily through State government funding and to a lesser extent, the Commonwealth government.

During this time, the Service has successfully contained the carp invasion to these lakes, which was its number one priority. It went on to significantly reduce the carp population in both lakes using innovative technology, and last year, appears to have achieved a total eradication of carp from Lake Crescent.

Favourable environmental conditions last year, however, led to limited spawning and successful recruitment of juvenile carp in Lake Sorell.

This was a major set-back for the carp team which was so close to achieving its long term goal of eradicating the pest fish from Tasmanian waters.

The additional funding in this year’s budget will buoy the spirits of the carp team and it will enable the implementation of further strategies to gain greater control of the carp population in the extensive waters of Lake Sorell.

This work will focus on the capture of as many of the juvenile fish from the 2009-10 spawning as possible, while preventing any further spawning or subsequent population outbreaks in the 2010-11 season.

Meanwhile, the carp team will continue to closely monitor Lake Crescent for the presence of any carp. — IFS

Electrocuted carp catch

The Director of Inland Fisheries, John Diggle has ordered the closure of Lake Sorell for fishing this coming season due to the outbreak of juvenile carp last summer. This special closure is enabled under the Inland Fisheries (Delay or Prevention of Spread of Controlled Fish) Order 2003.

The restriction covers public access to Lake Sorell and on land surrounding the lake down to its high water mark as wells the outlets of both Lakes Sorell and Crescent, and on land around these outlets below their high water marks. It applies to all activities that might result in contact with the water, including hunting, angling, boating, wading and swimming.

The closure is required to support the IFS in its work to control carp in the Lake during the coming season, when a major operation is planned to eliminate juvenile fish and prevent further spawning during spring and summer.

Willow removal on Macquarie River

The Inland Fisheries Service is continuing to remove willows on the Macquarie River as part of the Anglers Access program which has already improved onsite angling infrastructure, signage and information.

Additional funding provided by NRM North has enabled the latest work involving extensive willow removal and riparian remediation on two properties, Woolmers and Brickendon, near Longford.

Both properties are also involved in Angler Access projects to improve access and fishing in the Macquarie River. Mersey NRM services have been the principle contractor and used this as a valuable training site.

The removal of willow will considerably increase the extent of fishable water downstream from Woolmers Bridge and the fishing will be further improved with the installation of fence stiles, footbridges, off stream stock watering and riparian fencing.

Anglers will be able to experience the benefits of improved access at the start of the new season in August. — IFS

Annual harvesting of eggs from spawning wild brown trout has begun already

By Sarah Graham, IFS | As the weather cools and water temperatures begin to drop, the activities of Inland Fisheries hatchery staff are hotting up! Hatchery work of fish feeding and grading has increased over recent weeks, along with fish transfers to allocated waters, and the job of harvesting eggs from spawning wild brown trout in the Central Plateau, has come earlier than in recent years.

A first batch of approximately 720,000 wild brown trout ova was collected from Liawenee Canal, Great Lake in April.

About 560,000 of these eggs are now being incubated at the New Norfolk hatchery while a smaller number of 160,000 are being incubated at the Salmon Ponds as added security against loss at the main hatchery.

Adult transfers of wild brown trout have also commenced in association with ova collection from fish captured in the Liawenee trap. Approximately 2,100 of these wild brown trout spawners were transferred from Great Lake into Bradys Lake in late April.

In the hatchery tanks, about 15,000 yearling brown trout, each weighing less than 50g on average, still remain from last year’s spawning. These young fish continue to grow well in the tanks but are more than ready for transfer.

Ten thousand have been fin clipped ready for release into the Break O’Day River in early May while the remaining 5000 will be released later in the month, most likely into Craigbourne Dam.

A total population of approximately 272,300 diploid rainbow trout fry and fingerling are taking up the remainder of the tanks in the hatchery at the moment. These young fish, now weighing between 3.5 and 9g, have been growing steadily since last year’s spawning harvest. They have adapted to life in the tanks and are feeding well, with mortality rates continuing to decline as the fish mature.

In April, a proportion of this fingerling population that had matured more quickly, were released to allow more room in the hatchery with approximately 50,000 young rainbow trout going into Great Lake and 5,000 into the River Leven.

The boom gate on the road to Jonah Bay (Gunns Marsh Road) will be closed from May 17, as normal at this time of the year under the instructions of Hydro Tasmania. It will be reopened at the end of July prior to the start of the new season to enable angler access to this section of Arthurs Lake.

For further information, contact the Liawenee Field Stations of the Inland Fisheries Service on 0428 598 160 or the Tasmanian Parks and Wildlife Service on 6259 8148.

Marine and Safety Tasmania (MAST) has allocated $400,000 in funds this year derived from recreational boat registrations to develop and enhance recreational boating facilities around the State.

MAST called for public submissions for funding for suitable projects from January to March 2010 and held talks with applicants, including on site visits, to discuss the proposals during April. A full list of these proposals submitted to MAST can be viewed at www.mast.tas.gov.au.

A series of public meetings, listed below, is now being planned to provide the boating community in various regions with the opportunity to provide input the proposed projects within their local area.

At each of the meetings, MAST will give an overview of the relevant projects to enable a detailed discussion. Projects for inland waters and the East Coast will be discussed at each of forum, since freshwater anglers and boaters frequenting the East Coast live all around the State.

After the public forums, the MAST Board will meet to select the successful projects, which will be announced during June.

To have your say on the projects for 2010, you are invited to attend one of the regional meetings as detailed below. The meetings all commence at 7.00pm and will be held on:

• Monday, 10 May at the Burnie Yacht Club, The Esplanade, South Burnie
• Monday, 17 May, at the Tamar Yacht Club, Park Street, Launceston
• Tuesday, 18 May, at the Bellerive Yacht Club, Cambridge Road, Bellerive

Distribution of transmitter fish in Lake Sorell between January and March 2010

The latest update on the Carp Management Program from Inland Fisheries Service reports:

Despite the Carp Management Team’s intensive efforts to prevent the remaining adult carp in Lake Sorell from spawning in late 2009, it became apparent just prior to Christmas that some carp had been successful.

Juvenile Carp were first found at the northern end of Silver Plains the week prior to Christmas. Further Sampling discovered more juveniles in the main Silver Plains drain, Robertsons, Kermodes, Duck Bay and Kemps marshes.

An intensive treatment operation was put in place to remove as many juvenile carp as possible while still inhabiting shallow vegetation areas before dispersing into deeper water.

Rotenone, a derris based fish poison, was used to kill over 14,000 fish during a 6 week period. Intensive fishing effort has since been undertaken to remove schools of juvenile fish and to gain knowledge and an understanding of this new population.

Early indications suggest that we may have already removed up to two thirds of this cohort. Lake Sorell was tracked a total of 21 times between January and March. Due to the majority of time spent catching juvenile carp tracking effort was subsequently reduced over this period.

Download the full report here [PDF 466Kb].