Flyfishers tangle with Molewa over trout

the cANCer blindly stumbling forward farking up the country! :X3:

Adding trout to this list meant it would be a criminal offence to maintain the existing trout fishery or to operate the present 1 800-ton-per-annum trout farming sector. Billions of rands in investment and jobs would be destroyed overnight, the federation argues.
Click to expand...
 
The whole debacle is ridiculous. An evasive species is one that can breed and eradicate local fish. There are very few trout in rivers that are able to breed, which is the only place trout can spawn. They do not spawn in still waters like that of dams etc... This is why dams need to be stocked to keep numbers up.
 
I can't see trout dominating local species, certainly has not made an impact in the last 30 odd years.
 
Quite a few uninformed posts here. Trout are actually predatory, are not from South Africa and destroy populations of indigenous fish (E.g. Redfin minnows). While they are not as damaging as smallmouth bass, they do cause issues in cases where river conditions are conducive to their survival (E.g. Krom river in the Cederberg).

However, a blanket ban on trout would be short-sighted, as they are a valuable angling species as noted before. New introductions into non-isolated water bodies (dams fed by rivers without physical barriers to river entry) should be discouraged, but re-stocking non - breeding populations in known fishing areas should be allowed so that local fishing is not affected.
 
Nirv said:
Quite a few uninformed posts here. Trout are actually predatory, are not from South Africa and destroy populations of indigenous fish (E.g. Redfin minnows). While they are not as damaging as smallmouth bass, they do cause issues in cases where river conditions are conducive to their survival (E.g. Krom river in the Cederberg).

However, a blanket ban on trout would be short-sighted, as they are a valuable angling species as noted before. New introductions into non-isolated water bodies (dams fed by rivers without physical barriers to river entry) should be discouraged, but re-stocking non - breeding populations in known fishing areas should be allowed so that local fishing is not affected.
Click to expand...
Agree on the Bass issue... in KZN they are even going upstream and destroying wild trout populations not to mention the indigenous species. A barrage / weir has been put onto the entrance to the Spring Grove dam to try halt the bass from going further upstream on the Mooi River.
 
smkungfu said:
What damage can trout cause? This woman needs to read more.
Click to expand...

Quite a bit actually. Many examples, here's one: Shelton et al. 2014 Predatory impact of non-native rainbow trout on endemic fish populations in headwater streams in the Cape Floristic Region of South Africa. Biol Invasions (2015) 17:365–379. I have the full text, you can only read the abstract there. But the information and actual research is out there. Would be good if it reached more ears.

I was amazed to hear from some people that they didn't know that trout are not actually indigenous here.

SirFooK'nG said:
The whole debacle is ridiculous. An evasive species is one that can breed and eradicate local fish. There are very few trout in rivers that are able to breed, which is the only place trout can spawn. They do not spawn in still waters like that of dams etc... This is why dams need to be stocked to keep numbers up.
Click to expand...

True, the decision to list something as invasive must not be taken lightly. I see you saw my post above. However I have personally caught young of year trout out of a dam where they were supposedly eradicated; they had bypassed all barriers put into place and migrated up stream, spawned and re-invaded the dam. They're just not very well-known as a potentially damaging species.

ponder said:
I can't see trout dominating local species, certainly has not made an impact in the last 30 odd years.
Click to expand...

There certainly have been some impacts. Our local fish are particularly at risk as they're generally small and predator-naive.

Some general reading on the issue:

Cambray JA. 2003. The global impact of alien trout species—a review; with reference to their impact in South Africa. African Journal of Aquatic Science 28(1): 61-67.

Three summarised case studies. This can be read in full. Weyl OL, Ellender BR, Wasserman RJ, Woodford DJ. 2015. Unintended consequences of using alien fish for human benefit in protected areas. Koedoe. 57(1): 1-5.
 
@Nirv I would agree 100% that in some river systems there should be no species that are not indigenous, and that needs to be managed very carefully. But there are systems that trout co-exist and have done so for decades with little or no harm to the local fish. In all, logic does dictate that we should not have any bass or trout in any of our waters. But they are there and there is a massive industry around both. Its a tough one to find a workable medium. But the government must not be arrogant here, there is surely a more workable solution.

I would think water hyacinth is a way worse problem, along with raw sewerage that is pumped into our rivers, along with the black wattle that chokes up the water ways...
 
SirFooK'nG said:
@Nirv I would agree 100% that in some river systems there should be no species that are not indigenous, and that needs to be managed very carefully. But there are systems that trout co-exist and have done so for decades with little or no harm to the local fish. In all, logic does dictate that we should not have any bass or trout in any of our waters. But they are there and there is a massive industry around both. Its a tough one to find a workable medium. But the government must not be arrogant here, there is surely a more workable solution.

I would think water hyacinth is a way worse problem, along with raw sewerage that is pumped into our rivers, along with the black wattle that chokes up the water ways...
Click to expand...
I largely agree. It's definitely at a stage where complete eradication is both infeasible and would be detrimental. Though we need to make sure that alien fish spreading to our few remaining indigenous populations is stopped at all costs. Unfortunately we have a heavy-handed government which flip-flops in either direction, and biased interests from sectors of the public.

Agreed on the co-existence situation, to some extent. In the Krom (Cederberg) river, we have a situation where we don't actually have records of what lived in there originally. Local opinions have stated at different times that there were redfin and yellowfish, and other times that they've never been seen and the trout invasion occurred so long ago that there is no way to know. The trout in this river may or may not have eradicated redfins, and currently they co-exist to some extent with a genetically unique indigenous Austroglanis catfish population that is confirmed to be breeding successfully (unlike situations where trout have occurred with redfins, such as documented in the Shelton paper linked above. In those cases the minnows will be extirpated over time in almost all scenarios). This complicates management decisions and options, and blanket policy almost always seems to miss the mark.

And 100% agreed on the pollution and hyacinth point. We're really doing a number on our freshwater resources and we need to start doing some serious work getting things back on track.
 
If they remove all invasive species no one would fish as there will be nothing to target except yellowfish, which is still nice to target on fly rod, bait or lures, but there is nothing better to see a trout sip your dry fly off the surface in the crystal clear streams of the Western Cape.

There was an article years back about fishing in SA brings in more money than rugby and soccer combined. People spend crazy amounts on fishing equipment, these days the top of the range fly rod outfit can cost R20 000+, and then you want 20 outfits to target different species.

There is no easy way to remove invasive species. We sit with largemouth, smallmouth and spotted bass etc in the rivers which does way more damage than the trout which mostly eat insects. They do eat other small fish but the bass are the main culprits.
Carp is also a nightmare on it's own, also invasive, they are the ones responsible for causing the water to become dirty due to the way they feed on the bottom, also destroying "fish nests" by swimming through the eggs on the bottom, once a carp destroys the nest it's over and the male or female looking after the nest leaves and don't spawn again till the next year.

Take Groenvlei (Lake pleasant) just outside Sedgefield, was a beautiful bass venue for many years, till some dumb idiot introduced carp (think he got a R100 000 fine fort doing that, was also in the news years ago) and the water started getting dirty and bass fishing went backwards due to the carp destroying the nests. Still good bass fishing there, but no way near the level it was 10 years ago.

They can poison every single river system to get rid of all fish, and then introduce only indigenous fish, but the invasive species will be back, even birds has been identified as culprits that can carry eggs stuck on them from one water body to the next...
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top
Sign up to the MyBroadband newsletter
X