Australian Bass (Percalates novemaculeata) are found in coastal rivers and lakes of Australia's east coast ranging from Cape York to the South Australian border, however they are more common from the Tropic of Capricorn in the north to Melbourne in the south. They are fun to target and catch with 6 or 7 weight fly rods and clouser minnows or bass vampire flies fished on a sink tip or intermediate line tight to banks or structure, like sunken trees and logs. Like their North American namesakes, these bass will also target surface flies like deer hair bugs and foam poppers too.
They are a catadromous species - which means they live their lives in freshwater, migrating to the salt, or brackish waters to spawn. While Australian bass are not a threatened species, their number are decreasing. One of the reasons for this are dams and weirs on rivers that block their migration up and downstream. While fish ladders have been installed on some instream barriers, they are less effective on catadromous species such as this - where juveniles have to navigate upstream - than with anadromous species such as Atlantic and Pacific salmons - where it's the larger, stronger adults navigating the fast currents and inclines typically found within fish ladders.
For more about Australian bass, check out this cool fact sheet published by the NSW Department of Primary Industries. (PS - you'll notice that the binomial name of bass in the fact sheet is Macquaria novemaculeata. Up until recently, bass and their close cousins Estuary perch (Percalates colonorum) were believed to belong to the same genus as golden perch (Macquaria ambigua) and macquarie perch (Macquaria australasica), however the latter two species are primarily native to waters west of Australia's great dividing range and are potomodromous - meaning they are migratory species living their entire lives with freshwater )
Comments