Minister for Agriculture Adam Marshall kissed the huge fish goodbye - and said government is prepared for the next mass fish kill.

Some three million native fish died off during Australia's worst drought on record, with images of thousands of suffocated century-old cod in the Menindee Lakes shocking Australians, and the world.

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Mr Marshall said government could not stop another mass die-off, but could rescue the fish, keeping the survivors in fish farms until the environment recovered. Government has now bred twice as many replacements as fish lost in the drought die-off, he said.

They did exactly that in early 2020, saving many Murray cod from shrinking ponds into fish farms.

"This was a special one-off $10 million injection, a program on a scale that is completely unprecedented in the state's history. To essentially rescue and then breed and replace around six million fish into our river system just has never ever happened before," he said.

He flagged government would adopt a similar tactic in case of future mass die-offs.

"I don't have a crystal ball, I can't tell what will happen into the future, but I think now that this program has been such a huge success if we do find ourselves in the future in a similar situation with a massive drought, massive fish kill events, we'll certainly be better-equipped, better-armed and ready to switch back on to do this sort of work," he said.

"Now that we've established those networks with those private hatcheries as well, we'll be able to do something even better next time.

"If it doesn't rain you can't literally conjure up water like a magician. If there's no water there's no water."

He said the program was akin to a "modern-day Noah's ark".

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The cod were kept safe in a Narrabri fish farm after they were rescued from the Peel, and were returned to as close to the same place as they were fished out of as possible. The site is secret in order to keep them safe from fishermen.

Some 130 additional fish will be released into the river in coming weeks. The Tamworth fish are among the last of six million fish released into NSW rivers.

Each female cod can have as many as 20,000 codlings in a single go, and their survival rate in captivity is near 100 per cent, allowing government to rapidly breed back the depleted population.

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