Have to agree with Tony Westerburg there,not hard to catch down this way at all might not be good on the tooth after freezing but they make pretty good bait,great smked as well.

Maybe change the bag limit for metro waters as that seems to be where the problem is. Really i think its more to do with the warmer currents pushing the fish south than over fishing, bit like some years when the salmon run doesnt happen,they didnt change the bag limits for salmon at that time.

 i agree 30 is very generous, i would be happy with a limit of 20, maybe a boat limit of 40 , still gotta let a bloke catch a feed.

i have frozen herring, and most fish i catch, dont have a problem , but maybe my tast buds arent the best, killed by alcohol :)

just remember, the more you catch, the more you gotta clean.

I have  fished the south coast , 3 or 4 times a year ( ok its alot less than locals)

and have done since 1984, pretty well unstopped , when I bought my first fourby ( a bits a shitty) L200 , remember them?

So I can offer some light, and the days of the gutters at bluff creek, marlimup, warren and yeagarup, being black with herring

do seem to have waned. My best at the warren in the late 80,s was 15 herring for 15 consecative casts with a halco silver slice,

and you coulndnt go down for salmon season without seeing hundreds if not thousands of herring washed up on the beachs

after salmon attacks.( not saying this doesnt happen now, just seems less)

The west I know better and anyone who says the herrring numbers havnt changed , esp for shore fisherman , is talking outa there hat.

Woodies, wapet groyne, old freo powerstation , all in the 80,s 90,s were a fish a cast , with a bit of burley thrown around, something you cant say now.

However just as tailor plummetted in the 80,s and came back , is this a man made herrring drought or a natural cycle thats beyound us?

Fisheries have been wrong before , but so have fishermen, and I havnt caught a bag limit of the little scrappers for years anyway so It wont affect me.

Yeah smoked south coast bull herring, on a crisp autuum day  , with a brew , heaven!

Yeah i always thought the warmer water pushed them south.

I never bother taking Herring. They all go back anyway

Herring stocks may have decreased but to propose cutting the bag limit to 15 as a means of recovery is ludicrous.  How many fishos take more than 15 herring ? Judging by their buckets very few, even if the herring are around and on the bite. There must surely be other reasons that the herring numbers are down, not the bag limit.

That's not to say that I would disagree with reducing the bag limit to 15; I reckon 15 is plenty for a feed anyway, even for a whole family. It's just that I don't agree with the assertion that the decline in herring numbers is due to people taking more than 15 herring at a time, since it's only a tiny minority of greedy people who are actually doing that.

There is strong opinion in fishing groups both Com.and Rec. down this way(SW )that since the pilchard ( mulie ) kill a few years ago salmon and other pelagics were now relying on herring as a food source whereby once they followed the mulie schools.Thats at least when we noticed a decline in herring numbers. The greenies will argue that they were overfished and want closures but I think there are environmental issues that are a contributing factor.Hoping fisheries rely on reduced bag limits instead of over the top seasonal closures.

And I can also vouch for the years back story.

Beach house in the late 70s-mid 80s in Avalon. Just walk infront , a dash off whale oil and a bag off herring. Even then we only caught a feed, because IMO they suck frozen not fresh. But I have seen and still see fishers in the Cut now taking a full bucket home.

Nowadays it certainly ISNT a hezza a cast. Blame it on what you like, overfishing, Leeuwin Current, climate change etc, but I have always thought 30 is way to many for a fisher. 15 might seem a little drastic for some, and I would think 20 would be a good start.

At least whiting stocks appear healthy, which does lead to the point that whiting arent such a cold water species, and occur in hot water aswell as cold. Perhaps it is the current warming the coast as per a natural cycle causing the decline in hezza's rather than other causes

Herring numbers shouldnt be influenced too much by rec fishing I reckon,  environmental issues would make a bigger difference. I cant prove it tho.

After the hezza bag limit is dropped to say 15,  How many herring can I take as bait for a fishing trip? I always thought it was better for the environment to collect your own bait. (Carbon footprint or something)

 15 Herring is plenty. Pan fried fresh they are up there with any fish in my book. They are fun to catch so catch and release simple really. I would say more enviromental if anything if there's aproven decline. They are like flies up our way. Any bit of berley in the water and they're there.

in metro waters but the few trips south i have made there have been loads!! personally i think it has got something to do with the very warm waters! with a slower lewin current this year lets see how things go before the knee jerk reactions start

50 cents a kilo is apparently what the commercial boys get for them as bait .. definitely declined metro IMO compared to 10+ years ago . I suppose the consensus is some species are moving further south due to the warmer temps . Happy with a 15 limit myself , just hope we don't lose other species down the track .

I know of more than one spot down here that is still a fish a cast and a leisurely stroll along the Busso Jetty will see 100's if not 1000's of Hezzas being caught on a daily basis.

I also remember when herring were commercially caught down South and used in the process of making garden fertilizer.

I hate to think how many tonnes of herring went into that process.

good!! People tear the ass out of it. carrying on like churos ekse.

Just caught the end of the discussion on the radio but there was also a mention of a possible size limit being introduced as well, something that has been sadly missing in my opinion

id be cautioning this knee jerk reaction to just drop the bag limit straight up myself

1 id be seriuosly questioning the survey/science methodology that fisheries used to come up with this result on a declining stock ,

2warmer water currents may just be keeping herring biomass further south than in previous decades

3 the mulie decline has made herring the top food source for many other species

4 enviromental factors , water temps, oxygen content, food sources for herring to eat, such as blue/white bait declines ?etc

5 with herring mainly being used by commercial fishers as bait , definetly re allocate a bigger % of their catch to recs , no brainer on that imho

6 if it proves it must be dropped , then possibly 20 , but 15 is too low imo
come off the grass about freezer fillers taking 30 herring for god sake ,, 30 is not to high at present , herring are a staple
how many people eat them , then take a few fillets for demersal bait or keep 10 for crabbing etc ??

take into account your all going to be hit up in the next few years for a shore based fishing licence , how low do you want to go , before it isnt worth doing anymore , even for fun ,

how far do you want to be pushed down without proper scrutiny of how they got their facts, ??
i know from experience fisheries do get it wrong , and they should be asked rigorously to show their facts on the supposed decline ,
anyone see the herring schools going across geo bay in the last few season , ??huge ?

how many commercial licences have been bought out or stopped taking herring in the last decade ?? some stopped as the bait market dried up , some sold out ,some where banned from taking herring in geo bay etc their lower catch records does not mean automaticaly less fish in the water
this alone , should have you asking questions of this survey results imo

i travel to catch herring mostly , you will spend more time in the car than fishing ,

think about it , do you want to give up so easily without asking some direct questions from these guys ??
im all in favour of the sustainability ideal , but lets not get carried away to easily or quickly here

hezzy

Some years ago Recfishwest lobbied hard to remove the herring G traps from the south coast and won. A number of years later fisheries allowed the G traps back, for whatever reason. These traps are quite efficient and should not have been allowed to be active again. The other problem is that many of the WA stock will come from SA and keeping up the feed for the caged tuna industry consumes vast quantities of herring. So it is probably a bit of environmental as well as a higher take, while our pro's here in the west might be taking less chances are the take in SA has seen a steady increase to feed the growing caged tuna industry.

Here is a fact sheet of the old hezza http://www.fish.wa.gov.au/Documents/recreational_fishing/fact_sheets/fact_sheet_australian_herring.pdf

The past is the past I know but, as a kid in the late 70s and 80s going out in a tinny and putting out an oil slick (whale oil) almost guaranteed that within 15 minutes the water at the back of the boat would turn black with schools of herring and gardies, the size of these schools is almost undescribable. Literally tonnes of fish at any one time. That was in the metro area too. Certainly been a very long time since I have seen anything close to that.

have a look at the info in this link

http://www.fish.gov.au/reports/finfish/Pages/sardine.aspx
Catch Explanation

Small-scale fisheries for Australian Sardine have operated in southern Australia since the 1800s. National catches were below 1000 t until the 1970s, when several purse-seine fisheries were established in south-west Western Australia. The Western Australian catch increased steadily, reaching about 9000 t in 1989. In 1991, a purse-seine fishery was established in South Australia to provide food for farmed tuna off Port Lincoln.

In 1995 and 1998, two mass mortality events reduced the Australian biomass of Australian Sardine by up to 70 per cent. Total catches off Western Australia have remained below 3000 t since 1999. The South Australian fishery recovered relatively quickly from the mortality events8,13, and catches increased from around 3500 t in 1998 to around 21 000 t in 2002–03, stabilising at 30 000–34 000 t in recent years. Off the east coast, Australian Sardine catches have exceeded 1000 t per year since 2002–03; they reached about 5000 t in 2008–09, before declining to around 3000 t in 2009–10 and 2010–11.

Effects of fishing on the marine environment

The rapid growth of the Sardine Fishery (South Australia) led to community concerns that large catches could change the balance of the ecosystems in South Australia’s gulfs and the Great Australian Bight, and potentially impact on the region’s higher level marine predators, including Southern Bluefin Tuna (Thunnus maccoyii), seabirds and marine mammals. A large study was conducted to investigate the roles of Australian Sardine in the ecosystem and assess the potential ecological impacts of the fishery6. Despite the rapid growth of the fishery, negligible impacts were found on any species groups, even though several seabirds (e.g. Crested Terns [Sterna bergii]) were potentially sensitive to changes in Australian Sardine biomass.
The Sardine Fishery (South Australia) was closed for two months in 2005 because of high levels of encirclement and mortality of the Short-beaked Common Dolphin (Delphinus delphis)21. A Code of practice for mitigation of interactions of the South Australian Sardine Fishery with threatened, endangered, and protected species was developed during the closure period22. The code outlines procedures for avoiding encirclements and releasing encircled animals. Interaction rates were reduced significantly following the introduction of the code21,23. A working group that includes industry representatives, fisheries managers, scientists and representatives of conservation agencies meets every quarter to review logbook and observer data and assess the effectiveness of the code in reducing interaction rates. A report on interaction rates and the effectiveness of the code is published annually.

A code of conduct was established in 2006 to reduce interactions with Fleshy-footed Shearwater (Ardenna carneipes) in the South Coast Purse-seine Fishery

stopped along the beach near forrest late today on our way back form down south ,

no sooner than id put the burley in the water we had a massive school of herring come in , caught our bag limit of 12 in about 10 mins, water was bubbling at our feet with the buggers, and huge size to them as well

makes you wonder how valid the science was behind this latest change on herring as all summer iv had no probs getting a feed at will

, marinated the fillets up in teriyaki ,then cooked em off in a lime chilli tempura batter
went down well with a corona for dinner

hezzy

 That recipe sounds like a winner

I would have to agree with the numbers, heaps around Peppy and Stratham at the moment. Saying that, I really only ever keep 10-12 for a feed anyway.

But as you say it makes you wonder about what research was done.