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Was up in the hills on Saturday cleaning the windshield when I noticed it was all termites!
Got down to the nearest trout stream and found a good rise to the termite.
This one pulled like a horse!
Location NE Vic East of Broken, West of King.Best creek trout I’ve caught in years
Solid fish with a big paddle on the back. Wet spring is certainly setting things up for a great season, tribs and creeks up this way (tad more N and E) are flowing hard and high with more rain on the way.
Yes MicMae I showed you his good side, bit of a scar on the right flank and the pupil in the right eye was smaller.
Still he was a very pretty fish. All the others were smaller stocked fish, horribly mutilated by the obligatory fin clipping. It’s like cutting the wings off a bird or the tail off a possum.
Yes very nice fish.
Re the fin clips, if they are packed too densely in the hatchery they suffer a lot of fin damage. Very poor fish to stock with.
I see a few here in local stillwaters that are fin clipped not just fin damaged. I’m assuming its for cohort identification i.e. Left pelvic removed is 2020 stocking, left pectoral is 2021 or something along those lines. I’m not aware of any research program (like say angler diaries) that asks people to record these fin clipped fish so….
Though could give and indication of cohorts growth/success and proportion of total capture might help with population estimates.
But wondering why Gumnuts is finding stockies in creeks with capacity for natural recruitment, pretty sure these ought not to be stocked.
I’d be happy with a fin clipped fish right now… it’s been a long time since I saw a stream, let alone fished in one 🙁
Micmac,
Vic Fisheries are stocking some creeks in the NE and have done for quite a few years.
The data is available from within Vic Fisheries.
I know of one creek that has received every year trout and Macquarie Perch for at least 20 years.
here’s one of the fin clipped fish.
Its like a bird without wings. Can’t swim properly. Looks totally disfigured. I know what it’s for but is it that important? and if so just do the adipose (i) half off vertical (ii) half off angled forward, (iii) all off. There’s three age classes right there, and you can tell a one year from a four year old fish
The creek is obviously stocked that’s why these fish are in it. Natural recruitment perhaps, stream can get low and hot in summer, then blown out by floods.
BTW I cant find my proper gear,
the reel is a $25 Gillies,
and the rod a 10 weight I picked up in Singapore for Snakehead.
Works OK on little truchas.
so the left pectoral. Where all the fish missing the same fin? If so that would suggest a cohort ID thing, if its all or different fins may just be damage from pond density.
I find it hard to believe that even one pectoral fin (let alone both) would be clipped as a management tool; generally the adipose or dorsal fin is clipped. As you said yourself, the fish was “like a bird without wings. Can’t swim properly.”. Sounds more like damage from being densely packed in the hatchery to me.
They would not clip a pectoral fin. Only adipose, and maybe pelvic? When fish are overcrowded you get that sort of nibble damage of the pectorals.
wow. I didn’t even see this thread before I commented on the other…
great minds something something…
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