WHITEBAIT SEASON

Press, Volume LXX, Issue 21226, 26 July 1934, Page 18

WHITEBAIT SEASON

PROSPECTS GOOD FOR OPENING NEXT MONTH Though the whitebait season opened in the North Island at the beginning of the present month, there is yet another week to run before the fishing is legal in Canterbury waters. Last season was only average and thougn there was a fair supply of good quality fish from the local waters the consignments which arrived from the West Coast were not of such a high stand- . > ard. , A prominent city fishmonger stated yesterday that the prospects seemea good for the first part of the season at least if the weather remained u ne ; This he attributed to the indications of an early spring. In some P l ' ev '°"„ seasons when there was no protection on the fish 'they had been sold in the shops as early as July, but this nan been caused by a false spring, wuh a dry spell the whitebait do plentiful in the early part of the season, but if there is stormy veatne:. there may be no supply till the enu of August. Even in the peak of season floods discolouring the nver« are liable to run the supplies very low. No supplies are shipped down ft' 0 ! 1 ! the North Island, as the price wouui be prohibitive and the first supplies ar. generally received in Christchurcn from the Waimakariri and Ashley rivers and from Salt Water crceß. Earlv supplies also come to hand frora the West Coast though in one y® the first consignment came from tne south. No supplies are as n rule received from Kaikoura :md tne northerly parts of the or vvt. from the Peninsula.