Size & Bag Limits
Minimum legal sizes for various fish are a relatively recent management strategy - recent in the sense that if you're over 50 years of age, you should be able to remember a time when we had almost no minimum legal sizes on fish in Queensland. Bag limits are an even more modern introduction in Queensland. It's really only been since the mid 1990s that we've seen recreational bag limits introduced.
Catch controls come essentially in two forms - input controls and output controls.
Input Controls restrict how you go about catching fish, while output controls restrict how much fish you can keep.
Size and bag limits are examples of Output Controls and are generally accepted as necessary by the majority of recreational fishers in our experience. However the ongoing bane of contention is the lack of output controls placed on the commercial fishing sector, especially in the inshore netting fishery. It's very hard for recreational fishers to accept that they should restrict the amount they can catch and keep, while commercial netters operating in the same waters can take as much as they can catch. No matter how objectively you look at this, it's hard to see anything else but a reallocation of the resource to the commercial fishers, and that is the source of much of the angst between the sectors in the inshore fishery.
At least minimum legal sizes apply equally to both sectors in theory. The basis for determining the minimum legal size of most species is linked to the size they reach before they can reproduce. The idea of course to is present fish with an opportunity to spawn at least once before they are removed from the fishery by fishers. The obvious flaw in the theory is when a species has dramatically different sizes of sexual maturity between the males and females and where fish switch genders during their lifetime. A surprising number of our species fall into these categories - barra, threadfin and coral trout are examples.
To view the current size and bag limits, you'll need to visit the DAFF website: www.daff.qld.gov.au/fisheries
Catch controls come essentially in two forms - input controls and output controls.
Input Controls restrict how you go about catching fish, while output controls restrict how much fish you can keep.
Size and bag limits are examples of Output Controls and are generally accepted as necessary by the majority of recreational fishers in our experience. However the ongoing bane of contention is the lack of output controls placed on the commercial fishing sector, especially in the inshore netting fishery. It's very hard for recreational fishers to accept that they should restrict the amount they can catch and keep, while commercial netters operating in the same waters can take as much as they can catch. No matter how objectively you look at this, it's hard to see anything else but a reallocation of the resource to the commercial fishers, and that is the source of much of the angst between the sectors in the inshore fishery.
At least minimum legal sizes apply equally to both sectors in theory. The basis for determining the minimum legal size of most species is linked to the size they reach before they can reproduce. The idea of course to is present fish with an opportunity to spawn at least once before they are removed from the fishery by fishers. The obvious flaw in the theory is when a species has dramatically different sizes of sexual maturity between the males and females and where fish switch genders during their lifetime. A surprising number of our species fall into these categories - barra, threadfin and coral trout are examples.
To view the current size and bag limits, you'll need to visit the DAFF website: www.daff.qld.gov.au/fisheries
