A Place To Share Your Fishing Experience: giant river prawn

Fishy Tips

Tip No 1 - For coastal fishing, get a tide chart and learn how to use it.

Tip No 2 - Always try and get fresh bait. Catching it yourself can be fun too.

Tip No 3 - Use the lightest sinker you need for the job. Sometimes this will only be a very small one.

Tip No 4 - Become good at tying important knots. Get a good knot book, learn to tie the Locked Half Blood Knot and practice it.

Tip No 5 - Read as much as you can in magazines like Fishing World. There are heaps of really useful things as well as heaps of good pictures.

Tip No 6 - Never touch or handle a fish or creature that you can't identify. It might bite or sting.

Tip No 7 - Get a good fish identification book and study it.

Tip No 8 - Always wash salt off your fishing gear, including hooks and lures, after you've finished fishing at the coast.

Tip No 9 - Try and have a freshwater tackle box and a saltwater tackle box. This will protect your freshwater stuff from rust at the coast.

Tip No 10 - When you are not using your reels, keep them in a dark place, like a draw or cloth bag. Sunlight damages fishing line very quickly.

Monday, July 23, 2007

Get To Know The Giant Freshwater Prawn

The giant river prawn (Macrobrachium rosenbergii), also known as the giant freshwater prawn or the Malaysian prawn, is a species of freshwater shrimp (not prawn) native to the Indo-Pacific and northern Australia. This species (as well as other Macrobrachium) is commercially important for its value as a food source.

This species of shrimp can get quite large, attaining a length of nearly one foot and a weight of several ounces.

Giant River Prawns have been farmed using traditional methods in south-east Asia for a long time. First experiments with artificial breeding cultures of M. rosenbergii were done in the early 1960s, where it was discovered that the larvae needed brackish water for survival. Industrial-scale rearing processes were perfected in the early 1970s.

The technologies used in freshwater prawn farming are basically the same as in marine shrimp farming. Hatcheries produce postlarvae, which then are grown and acclimated in nurseries before being transferred into growout ponds, where the prawns are then fed and grown until they reach marketable size. Harvesting is done by either draining the pond and collecting the animals ("batch" harvesting) or by fishing the prawns out of the pond using nets (continuous operation).