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(Click for large pic. 92Kb)
The Golden Perch is the dominant food- and sport-fish of western waterways: it inhabits the inland freshwater streams and waterholes west of the Great Dividing Range, the exception to this being the Dawson River on the eastern side of the watershed. Stocks of adult Yellowbelly were introduced into Lake Somerset in the early 1950s. Fingerlings were placed in the Mary River in the 1970s. Today the fish is bred in captivity and extensively stocked in impoundments and waterways. This is probably the best of our freshwater table-fishes; the flesh is firm and white, and has no muddy taint even when the fish is taken from a turbid billabong where it has been left by receding floods.
It is an unglamorous, and hence underrated sport-fish; while it is apt to afford disappointing sport by bait-fishing in stagnant waters. The Golden Perch rises readily to an artificial lure where it gives a determined fight. It is one of the most spectacular things in freshwater angling while retrieving a surface-running lure to see the dark dorsal fin of a Golden Perch slicing through the surface to intercept the track of the lure, and have the fish strike so vigorously as to bend or deform the gang hooks. In colour this fish is usually bronze above with golden-olive sides, shading below to creamy-white. Some fish may be almost entirely black; some brilliant golden; others dull whitish all over, depending on their environment.
The caudal fin is rounded. The Golden Perch is usually taken at about 700 g - 2.3k g in weight, but grows to 10.5 kg in this State; such specimens, of course, are rare. Breeding in the wild occurs in midsummer and is triggered by a combination of rising water temperatures (exceeding 23.3oC) and the run-off caused by local "freshes", often accompanied by mild flooding--usually during the period October/November to February. Under these conditions adult fish move strongly upstream for a distance of some kilometres and spawn. A 2.3 kg female may lay as many as 500,000 eggs; these are pelagic and float downstream as they develop. The period of development ranges from 24 to 36 hours (depending upon temperature); the fry, however, are primitive and mouth less, relying on the egg-yolk for nutrition. The adult form is attained in about 4 weeks. Many developing eggs and fry are deposited by the receding flood-waters in billabongs and waterholes remote from the parent stream. The presence of both adult and small fish in such locations has given rise to subsequent (though mistaken) assertions that the Yellowbelly had bred in these waterholes.
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