Was thinking the same thing. Every action has flow on effects. The absolute boom of salmon surely has detrimental effects on the stocks of smaller species.

Try and find a school of scalies right now I think you can put that down to the salmon

 ...we all know that most years salmon don't do this. It's all to do with water temps and how far up the coast they go before spawning and heading back south. Three years ago there were NO metro salmon to be had, apart from the odd resident fish. 

The baby bream and other prey items in the river will cop it now but will no doubt flourish in a year or twos time when the warm water pushes further south and the salmon don't come as far.

 The stop on commercial netting down south when It comes to the numbers were seeing. I'de love to see the prawn numbers atm. I'm sure they won't be safe 

 its also heavily related to water temps. Water temps are cool in close, down around 21 degrees.

Yep, I remember a few years back where the salmon didn't turn up because of the warm water and they went out wide, suddenly people in and around Geraldton starting catching them.

The stop on commercial netting down south when It comes to the numbers were seeing. I'de love to see the prawn numbers atm. I'm sure they won't be safe>

<...we all know that most years salmon don't do this. It's all to do with water temps and how far up the coast they go before spawning and heading back south. Three years ago there were NO metro salmon to be had, apart from the odd resident fish. >

i dont see a difference in those points of view , imo both are valid co contributing reasons why we are seeing such a huge run of salmon this season

imo stating that commercial salmon netting in geo bay stoped around 2010 is not pro bashing , its just a fact that needs to be remembered as a contributing factor to more adult fish being in the water to successfully spawn here on the coast , each ''ton ' of salmon netted used to roughly equate to around 200 adult spawning fish when we did the counts on them , so if you remove much of the commercial harvest of up to 500 + tons that is a lot more fish left to spawn every year even in years of a weaker leewuin current their breeding rate must logically improve exponentially , if you then look at the last say 5-6 years, each year more fish are then able to migrate & multiplying into that spawning bio mass here , combined with the stronger leewuin current it makes it the perfect salmon storm to hit the capes and further north in big numbers .....

historically the commercial harvest of salmon has been up around 2000 tons from memory , removing a large part of that must have an impact

question i would ask is will it stay this way or is this a one off boom year due to that perfect storm scenario ?

will global warming impact on future salmon migrations in such big numbers so far west in a big way ?will nature adapt them to spawn in slighly warmer water or less saline water like their travels up into the rivers we are seeing now

hezzy

Flow on affect. They just about wiped out the scalies last season,the local jetty rats have noticed a huge decline in pelagics (macks and longtails) caught this year where the scalies are usually abundant but have not been seen this summer.. The big greenback tailor on the inshore reefs have been pretty scarce since the salmon have started turning up in the metro again aswell

a salmon i caught near ammo jetty on monday jizzed out white from its bum

are these fish spawning here? will we see salmon trout in perth ocean and river?

will the salmon attract more ytk and big tuna what else eats salmon apart from sharks?

one i caught a few days ago was full of roe, as i brought it in it spat out a hand full of mulie sized bait but in the later autopsy i couldnt see much else. 

a mate reports finding decent whiting in his salmon caught over the weekend. what about you guys, have you examined the gut contents??

hopefully they are cleaning up the blowie population the big schools i have seen in the harbours are eating everything in their path in their feeding frenzy

anyone found any blowies in the gut??

wishful thinking?? =)

 Good question, I was just about to post that the salmon we caught and released in the sound 2 weeks ago regurgitated up heaps of small blowfish

 I saw handfuls of yellowfin whiting in the salmon I caught so hope they aren't going to eat everything

 on how close the salmon come to shore but these bad years your talking about the salmon still go up to spawn but stay deeper in the cooler water . ive seen footage of them in 100 m of rottnest

 These fish are definitely spawning here, last year I caught a heap of 25-40cm salmon in Hillarys and surrounding areas.

Have also noticed the decline in the number of larger tailor around metro but hopefully it's only a temporary thing.

I don't see this year as that anomalous. Three years ago the fish were out wide, two years ago there was a good metro run and fish were aound for a few weeks at least. last year it was better again both inshore and offshore with fish hanging around Mewstones and outer reefs in Cockburn and surrounds for months. This year probably bigger again (though skewed with the ever increasing impact of social media). 

What's going to be the impact on other species? Dont know, but with large salmon aggregations in the sound will we have a good snapper season if all the bait stock is being demollished? Last year the snapper fishing was amazing prior to the ban, but was that due to the fish spawning earlier (I think beau posted on this previously somewhere?) and that followed a bumper salmon season where as already mentioned the scalies had been smashed autumn and winter long. I recall catching plenty of salmon in the harbour that were spewing handfuls of scalies so reduction in bait surely must lead to reduction in predators? Will this year be better or worse for demersals as a result? Theres a lot in the metro food chain and the abundance of salmon would certainly impact it somewhere

I think both of you are right in as much as just what are we going to be faced with in regards to the local supply of bait fish that is feeding this mass in flux of salmon at the moment

The scaly population has been absolutely decimated in my observations, places where they were quite abundant are now totally devoid of this food species for many of our local pelargic species.

Is this the reason we are seeing big schools of salmon in places where they are not usually sighted in such numbers, have they already made such big inroads to the food supply that they are now seeking food out in areas that they don't usually venture into and just what are going to be the remaining effects where they retreat back down south.

I think these questions are going to be answered in the next year or so and I really hope that one plague (blowies) is not being replaced by another, salmon.

As has been mentioned by others just how is the prawn situation in the swan going to stand up to this massive influx of very hungry predators.

I for one would be sad to see our bread and butter fishing degraded by these fish descending in great numbers onto our local scene.

But that's nature hey!

salmon will eat a variety of bait fish including herring ,mullet , blue bait , whitebait , mulies & pilch along with those already mentioned

down south here the best season for many of the above is autumm into winter
so imo mother nature has organised the food chain pretty well for quite a while now

when we netted salmon the migration runs over different years varied , this year is one of the best in a long time , even the real old fellas are sure of that down here

its not unusual for salmon to have been caught out deep like demersals that's happened for years ,the commercial shark boys have often hit up to a ton or more out wide

hezzy

 On the other hand, is now an idea time to start up a floating tackle store and just putt around where the school is selling Halco Twisties  and Smilin Jacks......

Up the limit to 8 per person ;)

with no evidence could be the weak current from north pro netting and the recovery of mulies after the virus from a while ago.I fished kwinana jetty as a teenager and the sound was dead in the 70s-80s this salmon run is amazing

i was in albany last week and the mulie pros i spoke too said there is so many mulies in the water best they have seen for a long time

also scored 30kg of iqf mulies

All depends on water temperature and where they come close to shore. My first shot with catching them professionally was at Hamelin Bay in the mid sixties, we were getting schools coming through at about 1/2 hour intervals of around 20 to 50 tonne and it was the case of pick which one was the right size and go for it.
While we were catching the other half of the team were situated at Eagle Bay and never saw a fish. We received a message from the factory in Busselton [they cleaned the fish and sent them to the cannery in Osborne Park] to stop catching because they couldn't keep up, to fix this we sent the Eagle Bay team in to the factory as another shift allowing us to keep fishing.

Yet another season about 10 years later the combined tally of all the teams on the west coast was under 100 tonne, of which our tally was 18 tonne, not much return for 4 months sitting on a beach waiting and watching for fish to come, at square up I came out square with the ledger, after smokes and food came out but wouldn't have missed it for quids

Spoke to mate today about this years season, the only cap the pros have is getting a market for their fish, they could catch as much as they want if they can sell it and not get stuck with a freezer full and no sales in sight.

He said that he hasn't seen this many fish in his forty odd years of salmon fishing, he estimate in the past week there would have been over a thousand tonne passing through Eagle Bay and one school this morning going between 100 and 120 tonne.

One would hope that these numbers will be around next year and there are heaps of left over schools staying behind up around Rottnest to keep the metro anglers happy