The 2012 National Recreational Fishing Conference was highly successful, enabling the recreational fishing community to gather and discuss issues of national importance. The event also catalysed four initiatives to advance fishing in Australia: development of a charter for the sector, a national fish habitat rehabilitation plan, and renewed commitment to communicating social benefits of fishing, and delivering leadership development initiatives.

The value of regular fishing sector conferences is recognised among the fishing community, and supported by FRDC, to facilitate continued progress, coordination and recognition of achievements. The next national event for the recreational fishing community is planned for 2015.

The primary aim of this event will be to engage the largest cross-section of Australia's recreational fishing community possible in discussing key issues of relevance to their sector, developing a shared vision for the future and agreeing upon strategic actions to pursue this vision. The 2015 event will be re-focused to more directly benefit grassroots recreational fishers, involving a new format, lower cost to participants, higher levels of involvement of well-known fishing personalities in the program, a focus on increased levels of participant interaction in discussions, and a series of events designed to be both informative and entertaining. The revised approach and program of this event will seek to deliver engagement of the broader recreational fishing community on a scale not previously achieved in Australia.

The ARFF Tackle Box project is funded through the ‘our marine parks’ grants funded by Parks Australia. The project aims to develop a recreational fishing app to collect data from scheduled recreational fishing competitions around Australia with the aim of being able to provide data on the interactions of recreational fishers with Australia’s Commonwealth Marine Parks. So far, the application has 1049 unique users, used for 9 fishing events, and has had data input for 1905 fish and 85 Photo only competition entries.
A real and meaningful opportunity exists for ARFF to lead the national recreational fishing community by introducing some simple retooling of the ARFF Tackle Box app and get on the front foot. There will be a push from some groups to keep people fishing but the reality is we need to be responsible right now. At this point, I think this is a moment FRDC can shine as well by supporting with funding as I am told there is considerable funds still available with the Rec Fish Research budget. Also, the government has subtly announced fiscal stimulus packages for sports and arts soon to keep the population engaged and there maybe potential to tap into both sporting/recreation and mental health funding. We have received offers of help to apply for these funding opportunities by professionals in these fields when they become available.
The proposal is to revise the current model and focus on the stash of data that exists already on people’s phones and keeping people engaged at home so that when the crisis passes, they are ready to go on our network. Capitalising on the low hanging fruit without fishers actively fishing and easily reach a user target of ten thousand people in a matter of weeks and potentially One hundred thousand users within 6 months without leaving home. This consists of 5 key elements:

• Fantasy/Photo only competition where people submit what they have on their phones from previous fishing trips before ARFF’s “quarantine at home/fish within the rules” policy came into effect.
• Community voting, engagement rather than “scoreboards”. It actively engages the community without the need to leave home.
• Keeping people connected with regular briefings and interactions with the states and regio