I GOT a phonecall from one of my spies on Sunday morning asking if there should be anyone netting our Moulamein Lake.
“Do not panic,” I told him. “It is just our mate, Professor John, and his offsiders doing a fish survey and I was just heading in to see them.”
John didn’t expect to get much because it is winter, but he was going past from another job and decided to throw about 20 nets in.
The nets are like a mini wing drum net.
They come in two sizes: fine mesh and bigger, about 1cm or so, mesh.
The bigger nets got about one carp.
The fine mesh caught Australian smelt, hardyheads and plenty of carp gudgions.
None of our new fish, the olive perchlet, were found, but this was expected.
Put 5000 or so tiny fish in a 15ha by 2m deep lake, they are going to be hard to find.
There was the odd mosquito fish in there.
Not many, as most of these invasive fish die off in the winter but, unfortunately, not all of them.
These little buggers were imported to keep the mosquito population down but they would rather eat native fish eggs than mosquito larvae and nothing eats them.
John and his offsiders actually sit there and measure the smelt and hardyheads as well as any other unusual species.
They are all recorded.
This sounds easy, but they are between 30mm and 50mm in the winter.
The carp gudgions are just weighed as they are very small and there are always plenty of them.
Professor John and his offsiders will be back in the spring to see if our new fish are breading as well as our catfish.
More rain
WE live in a dehydrated paradise.
Another 10mm last week just kept everything green.
There are even a few millimetres forecast for next week.
Keep it coming, Huey.
Not-so-green power lines
WE have these dirty great powerlines that TransGrid have coming through our district to deliver green power to our great nation.
If this power is so green, why can’t it go through state or national parks.
These parks would benefit more than farmland by stopping the so-called climate change.
Green power should go through green parks where possible and leave productive farmland to feed our great nation.
Nope. They have gone hundreds of kilometres out of their way to avoid the parks.
What do they think is going to happen?
Will a kangaroo trip over their wires or something?
These lines impact farming.
They do not have an impact on a park apart from a 70m strip of clear felling – like on all of the farms it goes through.
Football and netball at Macorna this week
WE travel to Macorna this Saturday to take on the Tigers at their home ground.
Good luck to all of our teams.
National Bowel Cancer Screening Program
ALL of us old buggers get this free kit sent to us every couple of years.
Most of us would do what I do and think “Yep, I will get onto that”.
I usually use mine as a marker in my desk file when I am doing bookwork.
If I hit the bowel scan kit there is nothing else under it that needs urgent attention.
Due to the fact we have had an unusual amount of wet days and I finally got my office tidied up, there was nowhere to put the bowel scan kit.
So, I accepted that I should find time to do it, maybe.
The free test is not that hard.
You poop on a bit of paper, run a toothpick through it and seal the container two days in a row.
Stick it in the fridge to freak the kids out, then mail it off ASAP.
It’s not that hard but we all put it off.
With nowhere to hide my kit anymore, I did do the test that could save my life and sent it off.
I suggest everyone who has one of these kits in a draw or being used as a marker on your desk, poop on a bit of paper, run a stick through it and send it off – or you could be pooping into a plastic bag glued to your stomach, not just pooping on a bit of paper.
It is not that hard.
River levels
THE Edward River is steady at the moment at around 1.75m and just under 1600 megalitres per day.
