Fishing competition
THERE were a few fishermen who pulled out because of the heat but we still had a good roll-up at the fishing competition last weekend.
There were 393 fish weighed in as well as three turtles. There would have been many more put through the weigh-in, but some people did not realise that we need every fish measured and recorded for NSW Fisheries.
They have finally worked out that our local fishing competitions are the best way to check out the health of our rivers.
They come along with their electronic stun guns and only get carp. I have had a discussion with them in the past about this.
All of our native fish are down the bottom under the snags and do not get zapped. All of the carp are swimming around near the surface and do get zapped and float up to get counted.
I would like to see the figures of the Hay fishing comp. I do not know what else was caught, but I know about 280 legal Murray cod were weighed in. Back to our fishing competition. Of the 393 fish recorded, the were 77 cod (29 were legal size – the biggest being 74cm). There were nine yellow belly, 36 bait stealing bream, 271 carp and three turtles.
Our very efficient members of our football and netball club managed to feed the multitudes and send them home a kilo or two heavier.
Well done to all those involved, you run a great show.
Easter yabby races
THIS is always a big event for our town, as well as Moulamein Preschool.
This great event will be happening at the Jeraly Wool Shed this year. It will have all of the usual stalls and attractions and will be followed up by our Moulamein Angling Club’s duck race. Two dollars for a duck to win a possible $500, $200, $100 for the first three places as well as plenty of random draws.
And, do not worry, if your duck comes last, you get a prize from Aspire Jewellery.
Rice harvest
THE early birds are knocking on Hooker’s door talking about starting rice harvest this week.
No doubt the ground will be ready after our global warming heat this weekend. I shut our first section off last week, went to drain it today, but it has drained itself.
The second section is shut off. Will get drained next week if it does not drain itself.
Not long until April 1 and an April Fool is anyone that still has water on their rice then.
It gets cold and there is usually bugger-all drying out of the ground after that.
Coots and Kate
I THINK I have upset Kate from Kerang with my real life commentary of our battle with our Baldy coots.
There was a Kate that had a go at me when I was on Facebook back in 2017.
Kate suggests I live in harmony with the Eurasian Coots. We do. There are more than 200 happily paddling around in my storage lakes at the moment.
They leave us alone, we leave them alone. When I pump my lakes out and the boats stop, these coots will go back to living on Moulamein Lake.
My place is their home away from home when the ski boats are running. These tens of thousands of Baldy coots are a different breed.
As for the safety of other birds when we get the big guns in, we have had up to a thousand pelicans living on our storage lake eating the carp as we pump it out.
There is also every type of water bird you can think of getting a feed as well. As for trying to scare the coots away, scare guns do not work, duck lights do not work. You can only protect a couple of acres at the most with those bird scaring speakers. We got smart.
To protect our hundreds of acres of rice, we hung a speaker off a drone and sent it out there with birds of prey noises plus every annoying other noise we could find.
I think we got a standing ovation for the entertainment from your coots. We tried dropping the water levels down, which is not good for the rice at this time of the year. Did not work.
Our rice crop has fed hundreds of water birds this year. It has a very fat, shiny population of snakes living in it, eating the tens of thousands of our very endangered Southern Bell frogs that have bred in our rice crops.
Our rice crops are their own little ecosystems that go unnoticed. We have got better things to do than spend our time and money shooting coots.
But sometimes this has to happen. I am not a redneck, Kate. I do not just shoot everything that visits our farm.
I do not even own a gun or have a gun licence. If you can find that rice from China, enjoy it as I am sure the Chinese do not kill anything that damages their rice, or use chemicals that were banned in our great nation 30 years ago.
Good to catch up with you again, Kate. That metallic taste in the Chinese rice could be DDT. Banned out here 40 years ago.
It’s a small world
I HAD a random grey nomad call me the other night. He is a mate of my brother, Henry, who lives up on the north coast of NSW.
They were doing a trip and decided to go via Moulamein to check out this little town that Henry is always talking about.
They were only having a one-night stop over at Moulamein Lakeside Caravan Park.
I ducked in about beer o’clock to say g’day. They were heading north the next day, so I told them I would give them a tour of our rice crop on the way past. Did that, invited them back for a coffee to meet the boss. Nope. They had just got a great Wattle Cafe coffee and they reckon I looked busy.
They said they wanted to do a farm day next time they come through and do a day’s work with me.
So off they go and thinking I might run into them at Henry’s 70th next year. Mark’s wife, Jane, rang me back this week.
She was very exited about something. When they got home, their cousin rang them about family history information and they got talking about where they had been, like old people do. They said they had been to Moulamein. Their cousin said, that’s a coincidence. My sister lives in Moulamein, her name is Kathy Gibson. Yep, I had a beer with Kathy’s first cousins and did not even know it. Called in to see his father, Uncle Colin, around 30 years ago.
It’s a small world out there, I very seldom get more than 500km from my farm but the world keeps finding me.
River levels
THE Edward River has had a small rise due to the environmental water coming down the Billabong Creek.
The Edward is sitting at just under 1.3m and 957ML per day.
This slight rise must have been enough to liven the fish up for our fishing competition.
The champion angler for the day managed 15 cod with a combined length of over 6m. I couldn’t believe it. When he came up to get his prize, no one asked him what he was using for bait or where he was fishing.
He may not have told us, but it would have been worth the question. I must get his phone number.
