rayke1938:
"IMHO until we get some across industry genetic variance guarantees in place for stocking / restocking, I dread the thought of brother & sister bass breeding..." Which boils down to the ethics of the fish breeders and the diligence of the purchasing officers of the various stocking assns.. How many breeders source their brood stock by running a gill net in the same dams year after year? Anyhow is this actually bad practice as do not the "wild"fish not interbreed in the same river. I think that most breeders change their brood stock every 2 years at least with the only exception being MRC which are near impossible to obtain Cheers Ray
aussiebasser:
Sorry, I can see absolutely no reason why anyone would want to protect the Bass currently swimming around any river from Caboolture to the border. Any Stocking Association that thinks it is doing ecological good in these river systems is deluding itself. If any wild Bass existed in any river south of Caboolture, and if (and this is a dirty big if) they do actually breed in these waters, they have been compromised by the fish which have regularly entered the rivers from the Stocked Impoundments upstream. Human interference has destroyed the natural habitat, and at best we (Stocking Groups) are building an un-natural population of fish purely for recreational fishing. Why then, should we inhibit access for no apparent reason?
elops:
"Do we want stocked Bass to spawn ?" The bottom line is if they can and get the opportunity to they will, and most likely have been in ever increasing numbers since cultured stocked fish entrained from the impoundments they were stocked in there is nothing that can be done about it. The effects of this on the genetic diversity of Bass both within-populations and among-population in SEQ is not only unknown but will never be known. Myself I take the optimistic view that there are sufficient numbers out there and despite the most likely genetic bottlenecking of local populations within-population variability natural selection will take its course. The recent flood events which have provided considerable data on the movements of fish between catchments simply prove that this has always occured and contributed to among-population variability.
Binder:
Breeders were required to use multiple females last year to produce a batch of fingerlings, (maybe further back, dont know) Bill was telling me it was causing him all sorts of pain doing so, as it resulted in to much variation in size of fingerlings.
I'm not to worried about it, bass as a native species have pretty much been shot in most waterways for a long time. I doubt there were any wild populations left down stream of the stocked impoundments.
Mother nature will soon enough get to work on the genetics of the escaped fish.