WFS Admin

Here’s how good the Murray River mouth mulloway fishery was before the barrages were built.

The following letter appeared in the “Fisheries Newsletter” of February 1946. The author is only shown as “Mulloway”, perhaps a former commercial fisho.

Sir, before the construction, in 1939, of the barrages to prevent the escapement of fresh water, the Coorong was perhaps one of the best fishing grounds in the Commonwealth.

But fishermen in this district would be pleased if the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research would undertake an investigation in connection with the re-establishment of the fishery. Yours, Mulloway.

****

So, to sum up, the barrages damaged an incredible mulloway fishery, along with most of the mullet, and probably a good many black bream, flounder and flathead too.

Today, the lower lakes are full of carp. They were full of murray cod before 1912.

Before the barrages were installed, local commercial fishermen warned that the barrages would kill the mulloway fishery, which operated between December and April in the lower lakes.

Fishermen had warned that the lower lakes lost the prolific murray cod because poor quality water was being being brought downstream from upstream activities.

More recently, the barrages, located between Goolwa and Pelican Point, were opened in October 2002 because the Murray mouth was in danger of closing from low river flows.

By the early 2000s, inflows from the Murray–Darling Basin were well below average, and by late 2002 the mouth was silting up.

In October 2002, SA Water and the Murray–Darling Basin Commission opened the barrages to flush sediments. Dredging began soon afterwards.

The opening was expected to maintain estuarine health, prevent ecological collapse and keep the mouth connected to the sea.

The most significant Murray flood event in recent memory was the 2022–2023 South-Eastern Australian floods, which sent record-high flows through South Australia.

The floodwaters peaked around late December 2022, with the flow at Renmark estimated at 185 to 190 gigalitres a day, making it the highest flow since the landmark 1956 flood.

It is believed nutrients from the flood, along with a marine heatwave and other factors, contributed to the SA’s unprecedented coastal algal bloom of 2025.

Meanwhile, see a great Facebook thread about SA mulloway here.

WFS Admin

I was surprised to see South Australia’s dusky morwong, or strongfish, being called butterfish on social media.

As a former Adelaide fisho, whose father also grew up and fished Adelaide waters, butterfish to us was always the South Australian name for mulloway, not morwong.

Nonetheless, the name has been used for both mulloway and dusky morwong over the years, and a variety of other fish.

Strongfish, or “strongies”, are the ever-present staple of spearfishermen in Adelaide’s seagrass beds.

They taste “strong” as they apparently eat a lot of weed, however people do eat them. How you cook them and how hungry you are will likely determine your opinion of them as a table fish.

Some fishos will tell you they are called strongfish because they are powerful, but they are rarely taken on a line. They are a solid fish and they grow large.

In South Australia, especially in Adelaide and around the Coorong and lower Murray, mulloway were called butterfish because of their rich, smooth flesh – described by some as buttery.

Perhaps the strongie was called butterfish for the opposite reason – you need butter to make them taste good.

Elsewhere in the world this family fish are called butterfish … https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stromateidae

A friend told me years ago that the humble pomfret was a great table fish that flew under the radar, yet another species called butterfish, as are the ever-present (in retail outlets at least) hake.