Whitebait Running Well As Season Nears End

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30602, 19 November 1964, Page 3

Whitebait Running Well As Season Nears End

(From Our Own Reporter)

WESTPORT, Nov. 18.

Whitebait continues to run freely in the Buller district and the season is expected to wind up as profitably as the 1963 period, when the catches were the best for some years.

Usually, when seasons opened on August 1, the peak of activities was reached by the end of October, but now the whitebait seem to be running later in the year, some good hauls still being recorded and the end of the

season only 11 days off. The fish have appeared fairly regularly in most streams since the middle of September, the month in which the season opened, and there is reason to believe that they were about in smaller quantities some time before people were officially allowed to use their nets. In contrast to habits of a few years ago, when whitebait only seemed to run on high tides, they have been caught at varying periods, sometimes long after high water.

In the Buller river, from which the bulk of the big catches have been made, the best results came from near the mouth and few of the fish got very far upstream to places profitably fished by Maoris 50 or so years ago. Then there were stores of whitebait selling as cheaply as 6d a pint and on occasions being used as fertiliser when local markets became flooded. There was only one factory then at Westport, but now there are a dozen representatives of freezing concerns besides the big fisheries, offering never less than the present price of 6s a pound. This week some catches of up to 401 b were made by individuals from the Buller river, while there have been good returns from other streams.