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OzFish Coorong Chapter

The way the Coorong Chapter came about was from a natural progression from members of the ‘Young Husband Fishing Club’ and others in the region wanting to make the Coorong Estuary fishing like it used to be prior to man’s intervention on the freshwater flows.

Well, at least as close as we can to those presettlement standards.  We all understand that the northern end of the Coorong Estuary has barrages restricting inflows from the Murray River with locks all the way along it for water storage to give us food production and drinking water.  The guys at the ‘Young Husband Fishing Club’ saw some of the work OzFish had been doing around the country and thought they could be part of this and get things happening in their own backyard.

The Coorong Chapter is looking for more keen anglers to make the Coorong a better place for fish. Join this Chapter today.

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What fishing is the Coorong Chapter famous for?

Our beautiful iconic Coorong is home to the famous “Coorong Mullet” which is the ‘yellow eye mullet’ that is wonderful to eat and in good numbers particularly in winter as they migrate up the system looking for the black mud for food.

Chasing these smaller species is the prized “Mulloway” which anglers target a lot especially on light gear.

However, the main species which our members target to catch and tag is the “Southern Black Bream”, growing as big as a whopping 65cm. This species is clever and wily, quite often finding the coral bommies before the net.

Geographical area

The traditional Custodians of the Coorong region land and sea are the Ngarrindjeri people.

The Coorong geographically lies between Goolwa and Salt Creek and is an Estuary or Coastal lagoon with fresh water inflows form the northern end at Lake Alexandrina also with above and below surface water entering mainly at Salt Creek to its southern end.

The Ramsar listed Coorong Estuary’s main body of water is about 100km long, situated within the Coorong National Park following the Great Southern Ocean coast line with sand dunes between the two bodies of water. Limestone and granite substrate forms most of the Eastern side of Coorong with Tee tree swamps; Mallee scrub and farmland close by along its length.

The water is brackish in the northern lagoon and more saline in the southern lagoon.  The bottom is largely black mud made of up decomposing plant life and algae with parts with a sandy bottom with mud cockles, worms and lots of coral reef made from a tube worm formed upon hard limestone.

What are the main concerns rec fishers have in the area?

The Coorong’s “Southern Black Bream” in particular has seen huge declines in biomass since the 1980’s due to lack of fresh inflows from both ends of the Coorong which they need to breed.

Combined with some commercial fishing pressure, the species is now labelled as severely depleted.  We are very concerned with this and started tagging them from about 2013 with SAFTAG all as YHFC members, to learn more about the fish numbers and movements.

There is another species we have now found is regionally extinct, the “Estuary Perch”, which used to be prolific in the Coorong and Lower Lakes. It would be great to see this species reintroduced and the Black Bream back to its former glory.

Projects done and dusted

Last year, we got our members together for:

  • Salmon Comp Wrap Up
  • Cooring Classic Tournament
  • “Clean Up Australia Day”

For Clean Up Australia Day, we removed a large amount of plastic from the Coorong Beach from the Murray Mouth south 5 kilometers.

This year we are again involved in Salmon Comp wrap up and would like to have our hand at the ‘Coorong Project’ government initiative. This initiative has a very strong focus on restoring the decline in the water quality in the Southern Lagoon.

Chapter members feel it’s great to see more water able to enter at Salt Creek with the recent works done to divert some of the southern drains into the Coorong.

The OzFish chapter would like to be part of making sure water and wind-driven tidal water movement can recreate some better flow between the lagoons intern improving water quality and fish habitat.

Continue the conversation with the Cooring Chapter via their Facebook Page, tag @OzFishCoorong in Facebook

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Meet Ups

The Coorong Chapter is pretty new and we are soon to be increasing our numbers to more people outside our fishing club interested in helping us improve fish habitat within the Coorong.

Meet ups are casual in nature, they conveniently coincide with our clubs “Salmon Comp” wrap up and our Cooring Classic tournament.

We hope to get some new members ready to go for this year’s Salmon Comp wrap up.  By this time, we can see where our members can help with the ‘Coorong Project’ government initiative.