I was raised at Cooriemungle In the heart of the Hatesbury shire this small creek runs past the farm I grew up on, when the Hatesbury shire was first cleared to make way for farm land some of these small creeks were damaged now we can,t give back the farm land the world needs the food but we can undo some of the damage that was done to the small creeks that run through this area.

The Cooriemungle creeks ( there arms two arms of this creek ) need some money spent on them to deepen and replace habitat that was removed, remove willows trees where they exist and so on we all know the problems and even the answers we just need the motivation and some funding to allow these waterways to once again be great habitat for river Blackfish.

So again I ask the question why are there no river Blackfish in the Cooriemungle creek.

Its not like we can,t breed them.

I use this for  quarantine, when you bring fresh fish or live food onto the farm its a good idea to have somewhere that you can put them for a while to see if they are sound and don’t carry any disease , with blackfish it is pretty obvious  if things aren’t right however if I bring fresh yabbies onto the farm from a new source I will place them in here, its a good place if you have sick fish to isolate it from the others make sure you disinfect after the fish is gone, to disinfect I use sun light but if you are in a hurry wash with salt and rinse well and let stand in the sun for as long as possible. you can get old vats from farmers who have updated to bigger ones if you can find one, it is polite to offer some money even if they don’t ask remember to buy a dedicated trough would cost several hundred dollars.

Breeding boxes if you wish to breed blackfish you will need somewhere for the female to lay her eggs this should be some sort of hollow structure 90 mil plastic tubes do fine or hollow longs that you can get from suppliers or find yourself , I made mine out of 10 mil ply  simply nailed together no glue as you can see in the photos they are not very big about 600 long and about 90×90 inside I kept them small to suit the fish I had at the time if you have larger fish you should increase the size of the hollow. I used just normal ply not form ply in order to not introduce a foreign substance to the water normal ply is stuck together with latex adhesive which occurs naturally in nature. I should add that the box above is five years old and has been exposed to all kinds of weather.

When you place the boxes in the water take time to consider the depth, it has been my experience that  as the water table warms they tend to favour deeper boxes at the start  in the early spring shallower boxes so the best policy is to have boxes at varying depths not to deep, you can see the top of my first box in the water and my deepest would be no more than 1.3 metres.

 habitat is vital for all native fish however blackfish are even more reliant on it they use it for homes ,shelter and nest  and place to ride out floods, what kind of habitat is best well when it comes to blackfish it doesn’t seem to matter, hollow logs like the ones above are perfect for larger fish how ever smaller fish would feel safer under it rather than in it this must be considered when placing habitat back into rivers and streams.

the location of habitat in rivers and streams is also important Australian rivers and stream dry up from time to time and this must be allowed for so some habitat must be relatively close to the surface and some must be placed in deeper water to accommodate fish when water levels drop.

In Australia all the rivers that run through farm land  are silted up and not as deep as they once where so it will be necessary to deepen some holes to allow for dryer times.

UPDATE: I would like to thank my daughter  son in-law and my wife for helping with this video.

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This is truly a great video these fish are feeding despite the very cold water, notice to that one fish has a white eye it could have been damaged when it was caught it is not holding it back, Notice also how they check out the food with there feelers and then back up and take the food.

It could be too that the lighter coloured fish are female

Erosion at lake Bullen Merri.

large amounts of rain have caused some erosion at Bullen Merri’s  south beach boat ramp  this in turn causes the water to become silty this then hurts fish and the food they rely on for food.

Surely this needs to be fixed as soon as possible, I don’t know who is responsible but quick action can lessen  longer term ramifications like fish kills which the lake is known to have from time to time.

The problem with to much nutrient entering the water from adjacent farm land also needs  a solution sooner rather than later its time to fix this lake and make it one of Victoria’s great holiday destinations.

Jan -FebNowWe have had a wild night reminiscent of the seventies, Rain, hail , lighting, thunder, wind all my dams are over full as you can see, the farm land around the area looks a picture I know the last thing farmers need is floods but the waterways need this and they will need several years of it if they are to recover.

This trout was caught on a weighted fly in the Curdies river it was one of seven or so that I caught that year, they should not be in the Curdies river but they are and this will make stocking native blackfish that much harder, sharing the same food source  and both being top predators means that only mature blackfish will survive but of course their young should they breed will become food for the trout, I am not sure how far upstream the trout reach it maybe possible that deeper section of the river upstream may give the blackfish a safe place to breed. 

We have had very good rains and it has set me up for a great breeding season, my dams and ponds are full and all but one is holding water and that will be fixed this week.

Frogs abound in all the dams to the point that you can,t hear yourself think over the noise , lots  of yabbies witch will be food for the fish .

These Yabbies came from my large dam and have survived the dry summer . the water is between 8-9 degrees so this goes to show even yabbies move around in the cold , these will populate the ponds and become food for this years batch of juvenile blackfish. Continue reading →