Also what is a corally

They're not white when they march in. They come in to the shallows from the deep to mault. When they shed their shells, their new shells are a much lighter colour, hence the nickname "whites". They do this a few times a year, the more famous is just before Christmas. I dived last weekend and happily half my bag where whites  

a corally is a resident cray that doesn't march in or out with the masses. They're deep marone in colour, and more often than not a bigger to jumbo size cray. 

 I see, 

Do they all march in from the deep all at once ?

 The western rock lobster does the whites cycle once in its lifetime, according to research and observation. It normally happens, happily, as they first reach maturity, which coincides with them making minumum legal size. Crayfish tend to largely settle on sheltered inshore areas, and grow out for the first four years. As they reach maturity , they move to sandy edges, fast, and moult. The resultant shell is very pale-coloured, hence the name. Once they are finished, and their shells harden, they move further offshore , looking for somewhere to settle. This movement is density related--the more there are of them, the more they need to move to find somewhere that can support them. There are those that actually don't move far--some, in fact just mature  where they are , and their shell darkens to whatever they are feeding on. Others will go offshore, then come back into the shallows later. Others can move incredible distances, going out over the edge of the shelf onto the mud, riding the tide north. They will peel off inshore as they go, looking for somewhere to settle.  Some of the really big migrations of seasons past  saw them chased up the edge  literally all the way to Exmouth. They were so worn out they were just dying on deck as they were being gauged. Or, sometimes they head south, running all the way down to Cape Leeuwin. These southerly migrations are the ones which build up local stocks down there--the fishing in the deep south tends to be good for a few years after such a run, then thin out, as juvenile setlement tends to be poor down that end of the fishery.  

Lots more I can tell you, both from science and personal observation from my near 30 years in the industry, but that's the basic picture.

Thank you for sharing your knowledge with us it is much appreciated I'm sure

 Ranmar what's the deepest you found your self setting pots?

I didn't realise that the WA cray fleet fished in such deep water, thanks for that bit of insight. 

 The whites run i was referring to earlier, when they go over the edge, can see them caught out to beyond 200m, which is considered the edge of the continental shelf. When they go that deep, it is believed that they ride the tide, travelling along only in light contact with the bottom. This hypothesis is borne out by the distance they travel when the tide is from the south--a massive concentration, meaning pots full, moves a long way north overnight. Conversely, if the tide comes from the north, they slow right down, and are easier to target. Anyone who has worked out " over the edge" will confirm this. You could spot the travellers if you caught them later as they came back inshore, before they did their next moult--the tails and even the bottom of their legs  were distinctly worn. It was pretty amazing tracking them on their return run, watching them appear from over the horizon and filter their way in, sometimes all the way to the beach long way north of Kalbarri. You could here the radio chatter, you were onto them further out, then the blokes working further inside and north would be " where the f**k did these come from" on the radio, white crays in March suddenly appearing amongst the reds.

If you are fishing later in the year, you would not normally be much beyond 150 metres max. There is just not consisteent bottom beyond that depth along the west coast. I'm talking in meters here, we always used fathoms. The outside edge of Big bank, for example, was about 55-60 fathoms, 100+ meters. It would fish consistently to that depth, better in a swell, of course. Beyond that, it flattens out, gets muddy, with broken flat reef and sponge gardens in around 65-70 fathoms. That stuff would absolutely go off in winter on a big swell, lucky to get one a pot otherwise. Good goldband bottom. I used to spend most of the old season, after the end of March, between 28-55 fathoms. Once you got towards the end  of May, going would get really tough, as you'd picked it over pretty well and you were also having to throw back lots of setose. But you'd hang out there, as the shallows were generally stuffed by then anyway, and you were still doing better than they were in there. 

And yes, lots of floats and rope needed. When they go "over the edge," it is normally double gear, two pots per rope, other wise the length of rope and number of floats needed meant that the tide would just drag them away.  I tended to stick to singles, not going that deep, tried to keep to 4 floats and 60 fathoms of rope, or 80 and a big extra float if going out to 50 fathoms. Four and sixty was normally OK in 40-odd fathoms. You could be pulling a line, all floats up, and see the disturbance of tide on the surface ahead. Then you only had two floats up, then 1 , then they were all down. You'd be grappling them underwater if you could see them, but that was risky, as it meant you might miss some, then have to come back and look later. Or, as carnarvonite said, you'd get to where they were, and you could see nothing. 

Recon you would be pretty handy on the old sounder Rammar...you work mainly Cray boats or covered long line fishing and few others ?

 for what its worth, got a white and another softy last weekend! diving 20m off Hillarys.

 Great information guys, some interesting facts here.

Really appreciate the insights to the cray fishing industry it is all great reading and to me very interesting  

 Did you know a cray fisherman named steve riley ?  I used to dive with him a bit when he was licenced to dive for crays out of bunbury. Later on we would sometimes go down to kilcarnup when he potted there and dive on his stuck pots and he would take us to some other places to get some crays and fish. I was snorkelling off the beach one day after he lost his boat in cyclone  and found his echo sounder.

I enjoy reading stuff from ex pros like ranmar and carnarvonite.

if it is the same steve riley he moved to broome i think ...

he had a 60or 80 pot licence back in the 80s
remember his boat , but not her name ..

was a good friend of my uncle rod smith ,
characters the both of them

hezzy

 Some really intereresting info in here. 

Reading for sure. The best thing is when your in 100 meters plus. And a pot comes up glowing white as white. Full of crystals all sizes . They glow

 Reading these posts i cant help but feel like a little school kid sitting on the mat with my legs folded listing to story time. There would be soo many people who take the gear and knowledge for granted now, when the oldschool guys were the pioneers for what we do everyday/season with ease. Cheers for taking the time to share i know i appreciate it

 Brilliant reading guys, great insights 

priceless

Wouldn't mind a few beers with you too ( Rammar / Carnarvonite)...few stories and laughs I'm sure.

 He did go to broome. Steve and bob jones and another bloke named dusty miller had a go at diving for crays in exmouth in probably late 60s or early 70s It did not work out but dusty stayed up there for a couple of years painting.The guy at waroora was nick faranachio or something like that.

Good conversation for a change .

 Really  enjoyed  reading  this thread  keep the old time stories  coming  fellas  ,cheers 

 Just as a side story I remember as a kid in the late 70's our parents used to hire a holiday house in Jurien bay. I used to spend every day at the jetty watching the cray boats come and go sometimes hitching a ride out to the mooring with the skipper on the flybridge. Catching  Herring and sometimes Tailor when the outfall was released from the processing plant.

I remember ute fulls of Cow hocks they used to use as cray bait but one particular day a ute come down the jetty with an Emu they'd hit on the road in. Good cray bait I remember the deckie saying to me and laughing.

Those days were magical when Jurien was just a small town full of fibro houses. I also remember my mates dad fishing from a dinghy out from there and bringing in the first Dhuies I'd ever seen in my life and dreaming of doing the same when I got older. 

 Hocks were all the go for holding bait when I started. Stinking things, bad news if you had a half bag needed using then it blew for 4 days and you couldn't get out. But the worst was when they exploded when they came over the tipper in the pot--they would just burst open and spray everything and everyone with one of the worst smells imaginable. Hide was better, salted hide better still, but still stinking slimy stuff to get rid of if the crays weren't eating it. Then we stopped using it, feedback from the Japanese market, which was our biggest market at the time. This is around the turn of the century. The Japanese liked to half their crays on the table before they  cooked it in front of the guests, and the ball of hair in the gut was a real turn-off. We did a trip to Japan with the crew from MG Kailis one off-season, and they showed us how bad it looked. So we didn't use it from then on. We were actually in Tokyo when 9/11 happened, watched it over and over again, and then saw the second plane hit, live.

Bait use changed enormously over the time i was in the industry. Back in the late seventies onward, you'd use one 23kg box of albany or bony herring for 80-90 pots. Unless it was the whites, then you might go nuts and use 2 boxes.  Hell, I worked out the Abrolhos for a short while start of one season, and the skipper made us split salmon heads with a cleaver, and wire that half a head into each pot. That was it. But we started using more and more fish bait. I believe this has had very far-reaching ramifications for fishing in general on the west coast. We were throwing a fair bit away at times, and the sharks, which had previously avoided fishing boats as being bad for their health, , started associating us with food. The researchers, in there wisdom, didn't pick up on this, and saw declining numbers where they had previously seen them as an indication of stock collapse.  You couldn't tell them--you could even have them on the boat, watching 20 or 30 sharks following you down the line of gear, and they didn't see it as significant. So they were overly protected, and now we are wearing the results. 

 We were out off Hedland when we heard about 9/11 over the ABC radio, was another 4-5 days before we got back in to television range and there was 6 of us jammed into the galley trying to get a look of it on tv.

We fished the northern shark fishery , our area was from 114E to 120E , NW Cape through to about Cape Bossut/ Bidgedanga and as far north as we wanted. We'd to trips of up to 14 days and end for end the line leaving about a 10-15nm gap then set again, working our way down towards Exmouth then give that area a work out then step out deeper and work our way back north again. All the meat was brined, plastic wrapped and frozen for export overseas. big tigers, hammers etc were cut into slabs small enough to fit into the plactic sleeve and went as well.

We notified fisheries that the catch rates of thickskins was dropping rapidly and their comment was that it was okay and to keep doing what we were doing. Sadly we got ripped off for 38 tonne of meat and about 2  1/2 tonne of fin, leaving us up shirt creek and forcing us to return to Freo and fold everything up. Had a very great time up there with many memories both good and bad to keep from it.

 What did you use for bait? I'm assuming they were bottom set longlines? Further down the west coast, the demersal gillnet shark fishery was in decline, but this lined up with,at least partly,  I beleive, the change in habits of the shark as they  moved inshore and started to follow crayboats. I took part in the Pre-season Breeding stock survey one year(02?). This was done by tender--Fisheries supplied the pots, bait, and the marks we had to set them on. We had 200 in the water, pulling 100 a day. The researcher casually asked if we would see any sharks. Now, these pots, at least in the first part of the survey, were out in 26 fathoms just NW of Kalbarri. We were only moving them less than a Kilometre a day, so I predicted the numbers would build. Bear in mind that this was in water that had had zero crayboats working it since May, and the survey was in October. There are stuff all crays on that ground that time of the year, so most of the bait was being chucked over. First pull, a few turned up. next pull, quite a few. By the third day we were up to our *rses in them, 25-30 sharks, mostly bronzies, a few thickskins hanging lower. And  heaps of cobia. We rigged the researchers waterproof mini video recorder on an aluminium pole, and held it underwater. Got some good footage, nearly had it bitten off the pole. . He seemed genuinely surprised by the numbers, and said he'd show his colleague who actively researching sharks. Heard nothing back. 

I was always involved in research, kept one of the voluntary logbooks every year I fished, took part in stuff like escape gap and artificial bait trials, and some tagging. I also served as the northern B Zone representative on the WAFIC Rock Lobster research sub-committee for some years. It was part fun/part frustration working with the beaurocrats, very Yes Minister. Not to mention the ongoing warfare between A, B, and C zones. Everyone had an agenda....someone dragged up one of the presentations I did to the coastal tour only a couple of years ago, told me that, at the time , I was so far ahead, in retrospect, that it took many years before thinking caught up. 

So that is why I left the industry. The writing was on the wall, writ large, for operators like me, and I was lucky I had an out. It was really hard giving it up, hardest thing I've ever done, but I've had a whole new career and life since. 

 I've worked with the old style shark longlines in SA--0nly 8mm treated hemp, clip to a short bit of green blind cord tied to a short piece of monel wire then aJ-hook , probably 10/0. Half a herring, or tommy ruff as they call them there,  for bait. The target down there, of course, was gummies, and you only caught them or stingrays, bloody big ones. 

Back onto the subject of crayfish, the changes wrought in the size distribution of the crays inshore, bought about by quota, has been nothing short of amazing to me. Back when I was doing it, the shallows, apart from the actual beach, right in the swell zone, were largely devoid of jumbos, or crays much over legal size. You could get big crays right in, or you had to go out to "the 21" , ie, a big strip of ground that runs along the coast out in 38-40 metres, and beyond. Beyond was "the deep" . The advent of quotas, and a split pricing arrangement, meant that the larger crays were being thrown back. Again and again, and numbers have built right up.  I hardly ever pick a gauge up nowadays, if I'm fishing reds  ( all of the above applies to north of the river, Kalbarri). Even in the whites, the larger whites (10mm over size, as big as a real white will get) were being thrown back, and the amateurs rejoiced. lack of undersize was a worry, as this was what killed us up here around the time i left, but there are a lot more around now. The last pot i pulled when i bought them in a while ago, when the pressure was on to stop, had 18 size, of which I gauged only 1, IIRC, 6 undersize, and a wobby. Fairly made the capstan grunt. if you are not catching a lot of big crays, you aren't moving them far enough each day.

 The big season they had down south in 2000? was a real killer, heard the best pot had 83 size inside and 5 jockeys clinging to the pot.

The line for the western zone runs 2nm due sout from the Lleuwin lighthouse then due west, there was about 30 boats on the north side of the line and only 2 on the southern side resulting in the 2 southern boats bringing in 3+ tonne each a day. With limited moorings some of the boats were travelling all the way from Port Geographe in Busselton and Quindalup as Hamelin bay and Canal rocks only allow so much shelter and they weren't allowed to head into the southern zone with fish on board.