Traditional fishing methods used to haul in salmon school stuns onlookers

The 19-metre commercial fishing boat Western Light, a small rowboat, and six crew were spotted off Tathra, on the far south NSW coast, trying to net salmon - by hand.

As a fourth-generation commercial fisher, part owner and master of the vessel, Brendan Aucote said they had been looking for a 20-tonne school of salmon to target

He said anything larger could possibly damage their equipment.

When the school of fish was spotted, the rowboat deployed hauling lines and a 300-metre net around the salmon before returning to shore.

There, the beach crew took hold of the hauling lines and reined in the net.

"We row in and chuck a rope [to the shore]. We had a crew on the beach already. They grab the rope. Then we row around the patch," Brendan said.

The motorless boat was used for two reasons. Firstly, to not startle fish as much as a motorised boat would, and secondly, because it had "always been done that way", the fisherman said.

Beach hauling, commonly known as seine netting, was one of the first methods of fishing carried out along ocean beaches by European settlers in Australia.

The Department of Primary Industries said an average of 4500 tonnes of fish were taken each year from the NSW ocean hauling commercial fishery, mainly in sea mullet, Australian salmon, luderick, and yellowfin bream.

After a rigorous environmental assessment of the NSW ocean hauling fishery, considering biological, economic and social aspects of the fishing activity, it was deemed environmentally sustainable.

"We only fish for salmon when the weather [is right] or we've got breakdowns. That's the only time we go chasing salmon," Brendan said.

"It's not something we do every day. Our main thing is hook fishing in Bass Strait for ling and perch.

"We found three schools and we waited for them to come along, but we missed them with the weather and the current. [When] we wrapped the net around them, they swam under.

"We thought we had a massive hole [in the net] or something, because when we wrapped them, we said, 'We got them', and we went out to the bag and there was nothing."

Brendan said a lot of people thought they were killing great numbers of fish.

He said that was not the case since salmon sizes had grown since other commercial fishing boats retired and salmon were cleaning out estuaries.

"In a way, we're doing a bit of a favour. We're sort of lessening the amount of salmon there so it gives the estuaries a bit of hope," Brendan said.

"You've got to have a control, or they just breed and you'll be over-stocked.

"You get 100 tonnes of salmon up in the river. You're not going to get a whiting or a bream there or juvenile jewfish.

"What we're taking out is minimal. We got eight boxes out of that lot of fish - about 200kg.

"What people don't see is that we were up at 3am, steamed all the way up there looking. Waited all day. [The next day we] repaired the net.

"[We were only] making a dollar an hour."