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+--- Thread: Clanwilliam Bank Harvesting (/thread-9558.html)
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Clanwilliam Bank Harvesting - Big John - 03-23-2015
Hi everyone.
Hope everyone had a good weekend, and a few slimy green fish dancing on the end of the line! I certainly did - I fished clanwilliam and caught quite a few smallies on a multitude of lures, from surface lures to plastics. As a bonus, after walking a grid pattern in the mud, I managed to find a gopro I dropped in the dam in Jan, so this should've been the perfect weekend.... What spoilt it for me was the locals fishing from the bank. I stayed at Lebanon, and from Lebanon all the way up the Eastern shore there were bank anglers. I counted around 15 in the upper reaches of the dam. After avoiding them for most of the day, I was fishing the same stretch as three of them at one point around midday. I got off the boat and observed their catch. They had 18 fish between them, ranging between about a KG with the biggest being around 2kg. All dead and cleaned, impaled on sticks. I asked them if they ever let any fish go, they said no, except the tiny ones.
I asked whether they thought the fish would last forever, or whether they would run out, their answer was a predictable silence. Whilst making sure I was controlled and polite, I tried to explain how long it had taken for that 2kg specimen to grow to that size and how many fish it was capable of producing through breeding and how taking everything out would affect such a cycle. Silence, and another fish caught and killed while we spoke.
Without any further knowledge or experience of what to do, I left them alone and went on my way, sick to the stomach at the thought of the afternoon and evening catch being taken out as well.
My question is the following: can the population at Clanwilliam realistically survive this harvesting. I'm new to WP and RSA so I don't know if this has been going on for years or is a recent development. My impression of the dam,from yesterday, is that there is a good population of fish, but how long will it last with a deduction of 300 or so fish per weekend? And I'm not sure what happens on weekdays...
Secondly, what can be done? I certainly have an freshwater angling license but is this enforceable by general members of the public? I understand that these chaps are taking them out to eat and sell small scale but the manner in which they do so and volumes they remove can't be sustainable. It is so sad to catch a fish, handle it with so much care, snap a photo and release it, only to have it caught the next day along with any other fish that bit their lines and be removed.
If anyone has an idea about what can be done, I'm certainly willing to try do something. Because I'd rather go back to that magic place and be able to catch a good number of fish than simply say, "I better enjoy it while it lasts." The other side of the coin is whether someone really in the know could say whether or not this harvesting is, in fact, harmful. I have assumed it to be, but perhaps the population of fish is sufficient to allow this without putting the fish in danger of being wiped out?
Re: Clanwilliam Bank Harvesting - Juba - 03-23-2015
This conversation happens every year around this time....
Nothing we can do about it at the moment and that's the bottom line!
The solution will be the raising of the dam wall....
So don't stress its coming!
Re: Clanwilliam Bank Harvesting - Mick - 03-23-2015
I was there 2 weeks ago, same thing, my recommendation, livewell as many as you can in front of them and move the fish to a part of the dam they cannot access
Re: Clanwilliam Bank Harvesting - Rory - 03-23-2015
Yip, spent the weekend at Clan and caught and released PLENTY smallies. Fishing was amazing. At least 20 to 30 bank anglers. Really pissed me off. The rubbish laying around. I cut and removed a few 'dead stick' lines tied to rocks on the same bank. One had a solid smallie on that was hooked badly and by the condition of his mouth, had been fighting that line for many hours. It really is a sad situation that makes me wonder how long the population will survive....
Re: Clanwilliam Bank Harvesting - jmgravenor - 03-23-2015
Mick Wrote:I was there 2 weeks ago, same thing, my recommendation, livewell as many as you can in front of them and move the fish to a part of the dam they cannot access
Hey Mick,
Unfortunately it wouldn't help much at all to move the fish to a different part of the dam. I can't remember where I read it, whether it was on this forum or on another site, but a study was done with a largie somewhere in America. They caught a good specimen of 2.5kg+ and installed a tracker on the fish. Over the couple of months they tracked the movements of this fish, the fish didn't move more than 100m left and right of the spot where it was caught. This must've been a really small piece of water or there was an abundance of food and the fish didn't have to go looking for some chow.
BUT, another article I read on bassresource.com stated that bass can move a couple kilometers in a day if they really had to.
Now I might be wrong, but I highly doubt that the bass in Clan spend the entire year in one area of the dam. Sure they might be caught this Spring and the same tagged fish caught in the same spot the next Spring. Doesn't mean the fish don't move with the food to another area of the dam during Summer, Autumn and Winter.
Anyway, all I'm trying to get at is that moving the fish around in Clanwilliam won't help in preventing them being hooked and cooked.
Check this out:
<!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.wmi.org/bassfish/bassboard/fishing_tactics/message.html?message_id=148850" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://www.wmi.org/bassfish/bassboard/f ... _id=148850</a><!-- m -->
Re: Clanwilliam Bank Harvesting - Mick - 03-23-2015
Well at least it will slow them down and some will stay where you move them to. We caught loads of fish in Rondegat and a week later other people caught almost nothing. At a minimum the bank anglers see us taking the fish away from them, the more work it is for these guys to slaughter bass the better.
Also VERY disappointed to see people accessing the dam via the Lebanon side, maybe they don't realise how many of their of the campers using their campsite are conservation concious bass anglers...not sure I am going to stay there again...
Re: Clanwilliam Bank Harvesting - Riprap - 03-23-2015
Hook & cook is good for any piece of water and all species of fish once that water has reached its potential sustainable biomass stocking rate based on the available food resource, breeding characteristics, species composition and interaction amongst the species. Should a certain species overbreed it's available food resource, these fish cannot leave the water to search for food and thus eat less or nothing and just stop growing. They don't die!
This in itself is cyclical and variable depending on many environmental, manmade and other influences on the ecosystem.
Are there figures to back up the concern and which has been going on for years in many waters? What is the yield of the system? Can it be determined?
If overstocked then harvest is advisable. If under stocked or "overfished" (as may be the case here) the remaining breeding fish will have more food and will breed more successfully and the fry should stand a better chance of survival. That's why our fisheries friends like to see a spread of age classes in a population which shows sustainability trends over time.
Unfortunately, due to politicism and history, there are different strokes for different folks in SA! History will one day show that small scale subsistence harvesting and fishing was based on a lot of assumptions due to constraints of the budgetary and suitably sufficient qualified personnel kind. There are those that are trying their best to determine sustainable yields but once you have the poor being allowed free access to a resource that they don't understand or it is not managed, then that's the decline into rot and more poverty.
There is a big difference between conservation and preservation…….bear that in mind as well. Clan seems to be one of the few dams where largies and smallies co-exist reasonably happily and which is strange. Normally the largies eventually out compete the smallies. Maybe you guys should consider a strategy whereby they remove only largies and release all smallies…….don’t know how though!
It’s sad though and I feel for your guys frustrations at having to witness this consistently. One family can only eat so much fresh fish so must assume the rest are being sold. Subsistence vs profit…….Is there a difference when you languish in poverty, dunno hey.
What controls (if any) are in place @ Clan to prevent overfishing?? When the wall is eventually lifted, you will experience a couple of years of boom time again provided the spawner biomass is sufficient.
Good luck.
Re: Clanwilliam Bank Harvesting - Southpaw - 03-23-2015
The guys fishing from the bank have always been there since I started fishing Clanwilliam at the end of 2010. The two times that I have been there in winter there were one or two guys braving the cold. Its only really Sunday morning that the bank gets a break but there is still one or two to be found.
Andrew has caught two 2kg+ largies in between their lines on back to back casts and took great delight in releasing the fish infront of them. I have also caught in between their lines and released.
But we should also look at this from the otherside. If you were somebody living on or below the breadline and had an easy and free source of protein would you not take advantage of it?
It happens everywhere TWK, Kwaggas and even Poortjies despite having to travel a fair distance to get to the dam from the nearest town. A friend of mine was there the other day and saw some guy take home a few carp and a largie well over 2kg.
Just at Clan the community is right at the dam but as long as they dont start gill netting our beloved smallies should be fine.
Re: Clanwilliam Bank Harvesting - nutt - 03-23-2015
Gentlemen
I don’t want to be the devils advocate but even if they raised the wall so high that it flooded the fishermen and their dwellings, it wouldn’t help. Unfortunately having had the pleasure of fishing there many weekdays, I have counted as many as twenty subsistence fisherman during those times. The reality is they do not only fish for their own consumption which would be the definition of Subsistence, they also subsidise their wallets as well. The Bass fishing fraternity are also Just as guilty of the eventual demise of the population at Clanwilliam, by hosting competitions and nationals etc. over the spawn period. Although the damage of this practice is not as evident, it is even more harmful than the harvesting of fish for food. This combined with the pressure from a growing Largemouth population will eventually tip the scales and the catches of smallmouth will be reduced to storytelling and pictures on the walls of pubs and websites such as this. There is a reason why you can’t fish for bass in spawning season in the states. We just have to look at Middleburg Dam in Gauteng to see the results of these practises. The locals got used to the taste of the fish and the Bass clubs all had their in-houses there over August – September and today No Smallies!
We will never be able to police the illegal harvesting and unfortunately the authorities don’t care much for Invasive fish species either even if it were keeping their stomachs full. There is light at the end of the tunnel though! Maybe the destruction of the Clanwilliam economy and the surrounding farming community will happen with such great speed that there will no longer be anything keeping the element that is responsible for the damage there and the Smallie population will return to normal.
Re: Clanwilliam Bank Harvesting - Rory - 03-23-2015
Riprap Wrote:Clan seems to be one of the few dams where largies and smallies co-exist reasonably happily and which is strange. Normally the largies eventually out compete the smallies. Maybe you guys should consider a strategy whereby they remove only largies and release all smallies…….don’t know how though!
What controls (if any) are in place @ Clan to prevent overfishing?? When the wall is eventually lifted, you will experience a couple of years of boom time again provided the spawner biomass is sufficient.
Good luck.
We must've caught over 150 fish this weekend, not 1 largie! I know Billy caught plenty smallies last weekend but also not 1 largie....
As for controls Rip, I do not think there are any in place....unlicensed fishing, littering and too many fish being removed per man ( ie no quota system ) are the current MAJOR issues in my opinion....
Re: Clanwilliam Bank Harvesting - Roy - 03-23-2015
Rory Wrote:Riprap Wrote:We must've caught over 150 fish this weekend, not 1 largie! I know Billy caught plenty smallies last weekend but also not 1 largie....
Ok KVD where is your report back!! and don't tell me its too close to a KBT comp you were on a boat and wont kick to half the places you fished from the boat?
Re: Clanwilliam Bank Harvesting - Donster - 03-23-2015
Roy Wrote:Ok KVD where is your report back!! and don't tell me its too close to a KBT comp you were on a boat and wont kick to half the places you fished from the boat?
4 of us were there the weekend. We got Rory there and u felt like KVD smashing the fish on every second or third cast. :eusa_whistle:
Re: Clanwilliam Bank Harvesting - Roy - 03-23-2015
Donster Wrote:Roy Wrote:Ok KVD where is your report back!! and don't tell me its too close to a KBT comp you were on a boat and wont kick to half the places you fished from the boat?
4 of us were there the weekend. We got Rory there and u felt like KVD smashing the fish on every second or third cast. :eusa_whistle:
I guess you guys needed the practice
Re: Clanwilliam Bank Harvesting - Donster - 03-23-2015
Roy Wrote:I guess you guys needed the practice
:blue-lol:
Re: Clanwilliam Bank Harvesting - Rory - 03-23-2015
No comments....none at all lol....