Spring is the time we need to think about food on the farm, we need food for adult fish as well as any young fish that are to come, brood stock fish are just starting to get active and are looking for more food , I have found that the brood stock that I have will not take artificial foods ( young fish may if started early ) so I must have natural food ready , yabbies and worms make up most of the diet this time of year later on crickets and grasshoppers along with moths that come along around April .  The small yabbies below are best for 1, 2,3 year old fish ( as well as black bream ) This yabby is the best size for the larger brood fish.

  Here I am checking a net for yabbies, you can see in the background lots of long grass and weeds , insect swarm to these and the odd insect falls in the water and also becomes food. I did cut the grass one year because there was a snake living in it .   The young fish I hope will be along soon will need food as well , here I am below checking for plankton and copepods along with water fleas and other assorted bugs. I also have a theory that if the food for the young fish is not present in the broods ponds in sufficient quantities then the brood fish may well suspend breeding for the year , this is not unprecedented in Australia Kangaroos do a similar thing , last year we had no heat and little sunshine in October ( necessary for plankton growth ) this inhibits breeding. The winter this year has been long, cold and wet heres hoping for a warm spring , we all know some places are struggling for rain and we hope it rains for them  soon.

I would like to thank Rob Beavan for the photos.

After the fires burnt down the shed that I had my aerators in I had to replace it quickly so I purchased a forty foot high cube shipping container to house the aerators and it works well, but the aeration room at the end of the shipping  only take up a small area the rest of the container will be used for aquariums that will house river blackfish and some pygmy perch so people who visit will get to see a blackfish.

The first photo shows the first six foot aquarium with a blackfish ( in the pipe) and some perch.

The photo below shows the room with the aerators one for each pond , they are small and the reason for that is blackfish dislike a lot of current in the water especially around mating time so these aerator provide air and some ciculation of the water but not to much. I have used garden hoses that have a pressure rating for air hoses they are stronger I have buried them under a track and they work fine,

As you can see from this photo below the diffuser is attached on top a blue drum which is about nine hundred cm high they are weighted with steel and placed in the middle of the pond, the reason for this is so as not to stir up the silt on the bottom of the ponds, blackfish like clear clean water as much as possible.

We are now heading into breeding season, plancton will start to form when the temps rise a bit just in time to feed the young fish that we hope will be there this year.

Blackfish this time of year go quiet and don’t eat much ,if you force them to feed you can kill them , the food sits in their guts and goes off because their metabolism is so slow, this fish has been separated from the herd so I can show visitors a fish he has a six foot aquarium all to him self apart from a hand full of pygmy perch to keep him company .

This fish would be around four years old and should be old enough to breed, I have had quite a few people who come to the farm to see the fish and the set up I have created to breed these fish.

While fisheries have told me they will try and breed these fish it could as much as five years away before they start so wouldn’t hold your breath waiting for them.

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If you are a youngster just starting out on a life time of fishing, remember fresh live bait is always preferred by fish , if you cant get fresh and alive then get the next best thing, remember to that it sometimes takes effort to find your fresh bait whether its worms or yabbies or in this case wood grubs.

These grubs are found in trees often at the end of their lives and you can often see holes on the outside of the tree where some of the grubs have already left, the grubs have a flat head  unlike the Bardi grub which is more rounded and of course they are found in holes in the ground under some Gum trees .

No matter the kind of fish you are after fresh is best .

Travis Dowling from fisheries has assured me that the hatchery at Snobs Creek are to attempt to breed River Blackfish along with other troubled fish such as Trout Cod, this is good news maybe at long last the Blackfish will get the recognition they deserve.

This does not mean that I have given up on a southern hatchery I am just please there are finally experts who put their knowledge to the problems surrounding this fish, I wish them well.

Its way past time that we got serious about saving this fish as you can see its been going on for to long.

1919 blackfish study

UPDATE: I went back to the Cooriemungle creek after heavy rain  today and found the creek flooded, if I was standing there right now I would be under water .

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This is the bridge where I recorded the video below , this water is bound for the southern ocean where it serves no purpose , you would think it would be better kept in the river to support blackfish and platypus , but due to heavy erosion from past clearing of the Heystbury forest it is so silted up that most of this water will not be there in a few short months.

below is some pictures of the clearing of the land in the catchment of this creek , I know this because i was on a farm cleared in the 1960 and saw this first hand.

We did this to the creek with bulldozers and stump jump ploughs , so we can fix it and I dont know why something hasn’t been done to date.

If people are serious about saving native animals such as the blackfish and platypus then here is a golden opportunity to do just that , having endless rounds of meetings and sending text to each other  will do nothing to fix the situation.

I visited the Cooriemungle creek recently and found not much has changed , this creek once held blackfish and platypus but not anymore.

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I have repeatedly asked the overseers of these rivers and creeks for action and none has been forthcoming .

for those who want more info you can call me on 0407843998.

Question do Blackfish like black crickets :

Well check out this video.

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Once again I have found broken glass bottles, and as was the case last time they were in a place where children could have easily walked on them , just think of the damage these could do to a child’s foot.

I picked these up and disposed of them like the people who put them there should have, there are bins only a hundred metres away right near the top of the boat ramp.

Today I received a telephone call from the Cobden coast times , the reporter was after a comment about a fish kill at Bullen Merri of which I knew nothing so I set off to have a look and sure enough there is a fish kill caused by oxygen starvation due to ongoing blue-green algae blooms , I have warned about this happening and I am not happy about being proved right.

Inaction by the bureaucrats over many years have led us to this and I fear we will see many more in the future if we don’t take action now.

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There were unconfirmed reports of two Bass dead as well as brown trout.