The Good Old Days

[aussie123]

I was having a clean out today around the house and I found a bunch of old pictures of some fish that I have caught over the years.

Most are between 15 and 25 years old and it makes you think and realize how good we had things back in those good old days.

What was an average or piss poor day for us back then is something that most of the younger fishermen these days would wet their pants over,lol.

Funnily enough though we too screamed for years to every government department trying to get more inspectors and restocking programs implemented to try and improve our fishing but when you look back and compare things to now you realize that we were lucky enough to grow up in what would have been one of the worlds best fisheries.

10 to 30 trout a session was the norm for us for many years or anything up to half a dozen cod and a bunch of yellas,silvers and reddies for a weekends fishing was not uncommon at all and that was very consistent over many years but to us back then we wanted better fishing too so things have not really changed that way.

I remember the years where we all caught at least half a dozen cod a year over 60lb and lots of 30-40 lb fish,all naturally recruited fish and not from restockings.

I remember the Murray River flowing crystal clear and seeing the big cod laying around the snags or cruising through under the boat all the time or on the hot sunny days seeing them float down the river upside down with their huge cream bellies out of the water getting the sun on themselves or the warm humid nights and listening to them feeding off the surface making these huge boofing sounds when they crash something.

Anyway I am just reminiscing the old times and i will throw up some of the old pics shortly.

If any other of the older fishos have some old days pics please post them up here as I would love to see some.

[BassTracker]

REALLY looking forward to seeing some of these fish!

[aussie123]

These are just some odd pics I found in a box.All of my good pics are still down in NSW at my parents house.

They are a mix of fresh and salt water pics.

13lb trout

Murray Cod

[aussie123]

[aussie123]

[elops]

:ohmy:

[Jords]

Thought I would save myself the effort of liking each post and just say

They're some exceptional pics mate - THANKYOU!

[Jords]

[attachment=39527]trout1.jpg[/attachment]

:ohmy:

Also that's either a whacky lens, or a very stout yella :ohmy:

[aussie123]

[attachment=39527]trout1.jpg[/attachment]

:ohmy:

Also that's either a whacky lens, or a very stout yella :ohmy:

That yella is the result of the very first experimental stockings into Lake Hume.

They disappeared for a long time and we thought they either died or moved upstream into the flowing rivers and then one day we started catching them once we worked out there they went to as the lake is quite massive.

They food chain in that lake is massive and the fish grew like footballs.They had tiny heads and massive round bodies and most were as deep as they were long.

They ended up growing to incredible sizes in a short time.

We soon discovered that they were extremely dependent on water temps of 22 degrees so we fitted temp gauges to our boats and went searching for them all and we eventually nutted out the areas where they liked to hang.

My best yella before I moved to the coast was 18lb but there was many bigger ones caught over the next few years.

When my mates invented the Bennett Mgrath lures that changed the entire fishery down there,all of a sudden there was massive yellas being caught every day of the week on those lures and restocking went ahead to create a magnificent fishery.

[tiotony]

Those jew are beasts and looks like all landbased too! Reminds me of my Grandfather and Great uncles telling me about when they were young blokes in the 1950's and 60's, catching monster jew at the river mouths virtually at will. Also seen heaps of old pics of monster snapper (20lb+) they used to catch from Snapper rocks on the tweed- sadly don't reckon there has been many really big snapper caught from the stones in SEQ in 30 years at all, I had to go to WA to get big snapper landbased, don't know if its even possible in QLD anymore.

But I think its not all doom and gloom nowadays, just look at the resurrgence of wild bass in SEQ, and something I have experienced personnally is the comeback of barra in populated areas in the north- 20 years ago while all the gillnetting/ no bag limit/ and no closed season was going on, a decent barra caught in a populated area was virtually front page news, now anything under a metre doesn't even rate a mention.

And can't forget the Brisbane river, when I was a kid it was little more than a turbid polluted stormwater drain, now its a good fish producer.

Looking forward to seeing some more of these old school photos!

[viper83]

Gee some awesome fish there mate. Give anything for those days again mate. CONGRATS

Cheers

Matt

[aussie123]

Those Jews are all landbased.We used to catch so many of those big buggers.

I handlined 5 jew one night between 86 and 95lb but they were offshore from a boat.

They totally destroyed my hands trying to hold them off the bombie that I was anchored next to.

I remember very well the days of gill netting,set lines and cross lines and out west and along the Darling River the farmers set drum nets big enough to drive a mini minor inside them.

Some of the old fisheries are rebounding in a big way now with more regulated bag limits and restocking and its great to see but there is still a lot of areas that I dont think will ever recover.

[Guest]

Great report bro, some very nice pictures taken

Well Done

Cheers

Darren

[aussie123]

This is some of my old fishing haunts.

[BassTracker]

Mate seriously loving the pics! Love that beast Jew off the rocks on the alvey reminds me of rock fishing with my old man at wybung heads when I was a kid! Some fantastic fish you must have some great stories to tell!

[Guest]

really was a great insight into what fishing use to be for others. really wish the quality & numbers of fish were still around.

[aussie123]

Mate seriously loving the pics! Love that beast Jew off the rocks on the alvey reminds me of rock fishing with my old man at wybung heads when I was a kid! Some fantastic fish you must have some great stories to tell!

Yea I have been real lucky I guess to have seen and experienced some of the best fishing the fresh water has ever produced.

I have some incredible memories of things I have done and achieved fishing wise but that is all I have ever done all my life.

I will post some more tomorrow night if I can get my stupid scanner working again,since I upgraded to Win7 its turned old and cantankerous like me,lol.

[keen_as]

The trout in that first pic wouldn't be from the hume dam in Albury would it?

[Schumacher1]

Absolutely amazing photos. So many great memories and stories to hear from that.

Thanks

Mike

[Manni79]

Thats really cool mate, thanks for sharing :cheer:

[aussie123]

The trout in that first pic wouldn't be from the hume dam in Albury would it?

He is from below the Hume Weir Wall.

There used to be some massive trout under there many years ago.It held wild populations of trout that were the biggest fish on the mainland.

I have seen a 22 and 27 lb fish come from behind the participator wall when it was pumped dry for cleaning and maintenance works.

The biggest I have seen caught was just over 17lb and probably several hundred fish over the magical 10lb mark.

I managed about a dozen double figure fish in my time there.

A pic further down with a brown and yella together were from in the weir itself.

You can see the vastly different shape and pattern to the fish.You can always spot a trout from out of the weir and the buggers taste like cardboard to eat.

The day fisheries in their wisdom removed the fishing closure and allowed the use of bait below the wall was the beginning of the end of one of the best large trout fisheries in the country.

Within 3 years the place was totally stuffed.

That was one of the most destructive decisions I have ever seen fisheries make.

[Bi_polar]

:-) :-) :-) :-)

[keen_as]

The trout in that first pic wouldn't be from the hume dam in Albury would it?

He is from below the Hume Weir Wall.

There used to be some massive trout under there many years ago.It held wild populations of trout that were the biggest fish on the mainland.

I have seen a 22 and 27 lb fish come from behind the participator wall when it was pumped dry for cleaning and maintenance works.

The biggest I have seen caught was just over 17lb and probably several hundred fish over the magical 10lb mark.

I managed about a dozen double figure fish in my time there.

A pic further down with a brown and yella together were from in the weir itself.

You can see the vastly different shape and pattern to the fish.You can always spot a trout from out of the weir and the buggers taste like cardboard to eat.

The day fisheries in their wisdom removed the fishing closure and allowed the use of bait below the wall was the beginning of the end of one of the best large trout fisheries in the country.

Within 3 years the place was totally stuffed.

That was one of the most destructive decisions I have ever seen fisheries make.

Yeah I thought it looked familiar, I grew up there and fished that system quite a bit.

[aussie123]

The trout in that first pic wouldn't be from the hume dam in Albury would it?

He is from below the Hume Weir Wall.

There used to be some massive trout under there many years ago.It held wild populations of trout that were the biggest fish on the mainland.

I have seen a 22 and 27 lb fish come from behind the participator wall when it was pumped dry for cleaning and maintenance works.

The biggest I have seen caught was just over 17lb and probably several hundred fish over the magical 10lb mark.

I managed about a dozen double figure fish in my time there.

A pic further down with a brown and yella together were from in the weir itself.

You can see the vastly different shape and pattern to the fish.You can always spot a trout from out of the weir and the buggers taste like cardboard to eat.

The day fisheries in their wisdom removed the fishing closure and allowed the use of bait below the wall was the beginning of the end of one of the best large trout fisheries in the country.

Within 3 years the place was totally stuffed.

That was one of the most destructive decisions I have ever seen fisheries make.

Yeah I thought it looked familiar, I grew up there and fished that system quite a bit.

Same here.I was born and bred in Albury.

I fished below the wall there 7 days a week,some days 3 times a day i would end up there and did that for so many years.

Quite a few of the lead fish patterns that you can buy are my old designs.I used to carve them from balsa wood and get the molds made at Riverina Patterns in Boronia Street.I still have all my old original molds here somewhere.

Back in its prime there would often be 100 guys lined up there for the opening standing 3 deep casting over every ones shoulders.Absolutely bedlam every time you hooked a fish and had to run down the rocks after it but the most exciting fishing you could ever do.

[aussie123]

Here's some other pics from when I passed to the dark side and went commercial for a while but very glad to be back again,lol.

[tugger]

Wow i just found this thread you got some brutes over the years