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South Australian Fishing Reports

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Glory days for SA mulloway

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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.

Huge quantities of butterfish (mulloway) and mullet were shipped annually from Milang to the Adelaide market.

Butterfish alone was worth £10,000 a year to Milang. But since the barrages were erected, commercial fishing has suffered a severe decline in these waters.

The following figures of butterfish handlings at the Adelaide markets (about seven-eighths of Adelaide receivals are shipped from the Murray mouth) vividly tell a part of the story.

During the seasons 1936-41 a total of 3,738,300lb of butterfish passed through the Adelaide market.

From 1941 until 1945 a total of 806,197lb has been handled.

Corresponding figures relating to mullet supplies are not available to me, but that fishery has fallen off practically to nil compared to results before 1940.

In January, 1940, the lakes were closed by the barrages, and from that year onwards the decline in these important fisheries has hit local fishermen very hard.

Freshwater fish have begun to show up behind the barrages, but there is little hope that catches of freshwater species will ever approximate the amounts of butterfish and mullet taken before the river was closed by the barrages.

There is no expectation on the part of fishermen that the barrages will ever be open sufficiently to enable sea water to come into the lakes like it used to, but there is a channel still open to the Coorong which, during high tides, enables fish to enter the lakes.

General opinion is that if this channel was dredged, fish could enter at any stage of the tide, and thus contribute to the rehabilitation of the fishery.

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.