Recreational Fishing
Content
A Guide to Fishing with Kids
Read about the 2007/8 Recreational Fishing Study
A GUIDE TO FISHING WITH YOUNG KIDS
If your other half has hoisted the kids onto you for a day of fishing, don’t expect to fill the eski with fish or beer.
Tip One: Training.
Use your spare evenings to prepare yourself for fishing with young children. The key is to take up knitting or crochet. Unravelling wool is great training for untangling fishing lines.
Tip Two: Emotional preparation.
Forget the beer, the newspaper and the thought of relaxing. In fact, if you go fishing with young children then be prepared to not, actually...fish.
Tip three: Snacks.
It’s a sure bet you will need to replace lost bait, cast the line umpteen times and apply bandaids. And as sure as eggs is eggs, you’ll at some point hear a child cry “I’m hungry”. Snacks are the key to lasting on the fish for longer than 10 minutes.
Tip four: Kids want to see action.
Use a coloured float so kids can see it bobbing in the water and are able to respond to any nibbles. If the enthusiasm is waning, throw some bread or burley off the pier or boat: kids love to see even the smallest of fish come to the surface.
Tip five: Smile.
It really doesn’t matter if you don’t catch a thing; you’ll still be a fishing legend to a little one.
Tip six: Remember your wallet.
If all else fails, stop in at the fish and chip shop on your way home.
Recreational Fishing Survey
Who is actually Fishing?
According to the IMAS study "2007-08 Survey of recreational fishing in Tasmania" some 120,000 Tasmanians fish recreationally each year. IMAS scientists pondered who is fishing and how much they are catching, because the combined efforts of you, and I, and that person over yonder in the boat all adds up. Incredibly, the amount of fish caught by the public, for some species, outweighs the catch taken by the commercial fishing sector. Information relating to recreational fishing is therefore vital when planning size and catch limits to ensure there'll be plenty of fishing to be done in future years.
I just called to say ‘do you fish’?
Dr Jeremy Lyle was the scientist in charge of the study to collect and analyse data on recreational fishing activity in Tasmania. Maybe you received a phone call? In 2007, Dr Lyle's team contacted almost 3500 Tasmanian households to determine whether they 
contained any recreational fishers - and of those that did more than 1000 kept fishing diaries to record their fishing habits over 12 months.
The information provided by the survey participants was expanded using some impressive statistics and mathematics to represent the recreational fishing population of Tasmania. The study estimated that during the one year (2007-08) there were 128,000 fishers in Tasmania. Of those fishers, some fished a lot, some just once. Actually, a small number of fishers (20%) contributed to over half (56%) of the fishing activity. This means there are some super-keen fishers out there. Most of the fishing was undertaken in saltwater close to the shore (<5km) and with a line; although other fishing methods such as pots and nets were used. And by the way, Tasmanians fish mostly in the summer and autumn months... I can’t think why.
What’s the catch?
Tasmanian fishers caught some 1.6 million finfish during 2007-08, and of these 1.07 million were flathead. This is approximately 292 tonnes of flathead caught by recreational fishers in one year: an amount four times greater than the commercial catch of flathead from Tassie inshore waters. Other catches of significance were 145 tonnes of tuna (various species), 48 tonnes of Australian salmon, 45 tonnes of calamari, 37 tonnes of Gould’s squid and 19 tonnes of trumpeter.
The one that got away
Recreational fishing can make an impact on local fisheries and the need for size and bag limits becomes apparent when the numbers taken by individual fishers are added together. For this reason, the survey is vital in planning these limits and educational campaigns such as ‘take only what you need for a feed’. And it looks like it’s working: the survey showed that release rates were higher in 2007-08 compared to 2000-01, with a trend towards sport fishing - that is, catch, photo (kiss?) and release.
