This is day one at Nelson.

We are here for the Great Perch Search.

The object of the next, possibly three days, is to catch brood stock perch both male and female.

Yeah, Glenelg River, one of, one of the great rivers in Victoria, no doubt, yeah, beautiful spot, great fishing.

All your cares, anything your worried about in the world, evaporated.

That's right. Its just so different to what I do Monday to Friday, sit behind the laptop, you know, wearing a suit everyday, it just gives me an opportunity to get out, you know, in the wilderness.

Its just good fun too, weather, the outdoors, what's not to like (laughs).

Its been something which has been great for the family, particularly the relationship between myself and my two sons.

We've ah fished together for twenty years now, since the boys were ten, twelve. Fishing has been the thing that's bonded us together.

Its fishing with mates, that's another thing, to be away and the camaraderie between you and all of the other guys.

There’s more than seven hundred thousand recreational fishers in Victoria, and a big part of this project is to improve recreational fishing by restoring native fish populations.

So what we have been doing over the last few years is, scoping out the opportunity to take brood fish from the wild and to initiate a breeding program with the view to stocking them into some of our freshwater and saline or brackish waters.

We took a list of something like twenty odd lakes or candidate locations, we ended up with half a dozen lakes that we felt had real potential.

The fish farming facilities in Victoria weren't there, so we looked at the NSW bass breeders, and we identified a particular bass breeder there who was interested in estuary perch.

We've collaborated with a whole bunch of recreational fishers, a lot of them tournament fishers, and we call that group the Great Perch Search Team.

These guys are very professional in their outlook, they compete at the national level, they have all of the equipment, technology, and those guys volunteered to help us out.

Why support it, ahhh, cause I like to see our kids, grand kids when there old enough to fish, have some fish to catch.

I reckon its great to be here with the fisheries and, you know, working in conjunction with them and, showing them that we set a pretty decent precedent.

Even just having a chat to them and seeing what their strategy and what the plan is for the next 12, you know, 36 months, and its just, yeah, something really exciting, they've got some great things coming up.

In the long run your going to get something back, you know, down the track, the grand kids and all of that sort of thing are going to benefit from it, you know, everyone in the community is going to benefit.

What it essentially did is bought fisheries, managers and researchers closer to recreational fishers, so we developed some shared vision.

Coming here and fishing with mates like Mike here, and the other blokes that we normally fish against in tournaments it is exciting because wer'e here this time as one, we are all here to do a job, we're not competing against one another.

Hopefully get a fish.

You had better get it in the boat, aaawww no, its a little Bream, poled it in, pole him in, be happy with that too, little guy.

Its a little Bream on an Atomic fat grub.

Were using lures called vibration lures, so when they're being pulled up from the bottom, it makes a ppppprrrrt sound.

Its always a challenge to, ah, to figure out where they are and what they're going to eat. A great satisfaction when you work that out and you catch some.

Awww, just a calculated guess, (laughs). We have too many lures in our tackle box and, ahhh, we just keep trying until something maybe turns up that catches a fish and then we stick with it, yeah.

In the end it just means again, more fish like that guy there.

Another medium sort of EP, looks like its got a bit of roe in so that should be good for ahhhh, up to Narooma as well.

The yellow line is the bottom, and all of these little red, boomerangs if you like, aahhh, there fish and they're packed together tight.

What were we saying about moving, you keep saying it mate, what was that on, prawn, that's what we're after.

He's only a little fella, definitely gonna be a male, he's probably glad to see us, I dunno, quite often they'll milt but he's not doing so much.

Alright, surely there's a couple more in there.

There we go, nice little female, ahhh, that's what we're after, she's in beautiful condition, absolutely beautiful, and we worry about using big lures on these fish and um, with a mouth like that you haven't really gotta worry, they just suck em in, yeah, so she's in the well and she's off to Narooma for a holiday.

Our great perch searches when they catch a fish, they put them in their live wells, because they've got recirculated water, they then bring the boats and the fish to our holding station.

The perch are congregating in a certain salinity level, we hold the fish overnight in that same level so the fish get on the plane in the best possible condition.

On the morning of the departure of the plane, we go through a process of screening every single fish, we'll make a call as to whether its likely to be male or female, and then we box them up accordingly.

We put about ten litres of water in each plastic bag, we put two or three brood fish in those bags and then we charge the water with oxygen, and we do that to ensure that there's sufficient oxygen in the water to enable the fish to be transported for three and a half hours.

The fish are boxed up and there going to the airport so that's good news.

Three and a half thousand feet to four thousand feet which will be our maximum height and that's to stop the product from perishing and also the expansion of the gases in the containment bags.

The plane had taken off so it was all looking good. A storm cell had come in around Narooma, the pilot couldn't effectively get through and land, he went past the airfield and ultimately dropped through a hole in the clouds, the fish were landed, all be it about an hour and a half, two hours late.

Were just leaving the airport, we just picked up the perch, yeah, so hopefully they're all fit and well when we get there.

When you open the boxes when you get them here its always a lucky dip, they were in really good condition when we got them here today.

Over the next day I will increase the salinity level gradually, that will get us to a point where we are able to give them the hormones to induce them to spawn.

By the end of the week we should have fry in the tank.

This is a pond that we have got estuary perch in, these flew up three weeks ago. The little tiny ones in here are feeding on plankton, they will be big enough around four months old to send back down to Victoria and stock in the water ways.

You could have anywhere from twenty thousand in a pond to around fifty thousand in a pond.

If we can produce around a hundred thousand estuary perch we should be able to stock all seven estuary perch waters.

(laughing) one, two, three, perch search