There is no fence-sitting on redfin perch with Steve "Starlo" Starling. Filming a kayak day on Victoria's Lake Buffalo this week with mate Robbie Alexander, the long-time Aussie angler made the case for killing every redfin he catches — and made it without apology.
The footage opens at sun-up in the King Valley, with Starlo launching into a 3.6-degree morning. He had not fished Lake Buffalo in years and was hoping the cold front and dropping temperatures would not flatten the bite. "I camped not far from here last night and I woke up to I think 3.6 degrees this morning," he said. "It's starting to get quite cold and I don't think that'll be brilliant for the fishing, but you never know."
Trolling a small Squidgy Bug under a beetle-spin arm across a 2-metre weed flat, he hooked his first redfin within minutes. That fish became the centrepiece of a quiet on-water debate that ran the rest of the day.
"I prefer not to. I kill every red fin I catch, even the really small ones," Starlo said. "Apart from anything else, they over-populate and stunt. So I think that by killing a few, you probably result in some bigger ones. And I do like eating them."
He flagged that Robbie does not always do the same. "I know that Robbie happily lets go some redfin and I have no objections to that. He's within his rights to do so. You're allowed to transport them between one waterway and another, but you can let them go where you catch them," he noted, before doubling down on his position regardless of fish size.
"Even one that size, believe it or not, you're going to get two little fish fingers off it. You get a few of those, you can actually make a meal out of it," he said. "I prefer not to waste them. If I'm going to kill them, I put them to good use."
The Murray cod side of the morning never came together. Starlo cranked a deep-diving floater along a row of drowned trees and clay banks where Robbie had taken two cod the previous week and got nothing back. "One thing you can rely on with cod is their fickle un-predictability," he said.
The breakthrough arrived when Robbie radioed in a school of redfin sitting in front of one of the boat ramps. He had switched from trolling to vertically jigging a vibe straight under the rod tip and was hooking up almost every drop. "It's three in the esky," he called as Starlo paddled across.
Once Starlo copied the technique, the action sped up. "Vertical jigging or bobbing is a deadly way to target redfin even in this shallow water," he said, pinning fish on a small assist-hooked vibe through the worm-stunted school.
The redfin debate is not a new one in Australian freshwater. Declared a Class 1 noxious species in Victoria and a controlled pest across most southern jurisdictions, redfin perch are widely blamed for stunting native populations and competing with juvenile cod and yellowbelly. Catch-and-kill is the line state fisheries agencies have pushed for years; release-and-protect is largely a personal preference.
Starlo's view is uncomplicated. He kills them, eats them, and pays them the courtesy of being honest about why. By the time the kayaks pulled out, the esky held a respectable pile of dispatched redfin, and one of Australia's best-known anglers was already planning dinner.
"Looks like I'll eat pretty well tonight," he said.