The ‘carp out - natives in’ concept was started by a small group of concerned anglers in the Rathdowney/Beaudesert area to get introduced noxious carp out of the Logan and Albert River systems and replace them with native fish.

Logan & Albert Fish Management Assoc (LAFMA), formally known as Carpbusters, have run seven successful Carp Eradication Competitions from 1998 to 2004. They have removed more than 10 tonne of carp from the rivers and raised approximately $75,000 to purchase fingerlings (Australian bass and Mary River cod) for their native fish stocking program.

With money raised from these competitions, other fundraising efforts in the local community, and some annual funding from the Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry (DAFF) Recreational Fishing Enhancement Program, approximately 1 million Australian bass and 46,500 Mary River cod fingerlings have been released into the upper Logan and Albert River systems since 1998.

In 2012, after pressure from the public to get a recreational fishery started in the newly completed Wyaralong Dam (between Beaudesert and Boonah), LAFMA applied to Fisheries to have its stocking permit amended to include Wyaralong Dam. Permission was granted allowing us to stock Bass and Mary River cod. Our fund-raising efforts now had to go up a few gears as MR cod fingerling do not come cheap and we wanted to create a cod fishery for South East Queensland. There were so many bass fisheries already existing that our aim is to create a Mary River cod fishery in Wyaralong, with a back up of Australian bass.

Wyaralong Dam was built on Teviot Brook, a tributary of the Logan River that is inundated with carp and now tilapia. Damming Teviot Brook at Wyaralong has created a haven for these noxious fish whose numbers appear to have exploded. The purpose of the comp is ‘to kill a few birds with the one stone’ by: (1) raise some funds to stock fingerlings into the dam (2) eradicate some of the pests (3) educate the general public on noxious fish.

LAFMA has run two successful Carp Eradication competitions at the dam and will be running our third, a Carp & Tilapia Eradication competition on Saturday 28 February 2015. All proceeds from the competition purchase bass and Mary River cod fingerlings for the dam.

For more information go to www.lafma.org. – Lloyd Willmann