Going fishing with Kotare

Press, Volume CXII, Issue 33083, 25 November 1972, Page 9

Going fishing with Kotare

Set a net for trout these days and you would bring down the wrath of the law. But it really wasn’t so long ago that you could buy fresh trout in Auckland, Wellington, Taupo, Rotorua, Christchurch, and points further south—all netted from lakes making up New Zealand’s “thermal fisheries.”

Housewives at fish markets in Auckland paid 10c a pound for fresh trout from Lake Rotorua. In Rotorua they paid Bc, in Wellington 10c and in Christchurch 15c.

Passengers on long-distance trains could order trout from dining-car menus. And in the early days of the First World War large consignments of trout were sent to help fatten officers and men of Trentham Military Camp and the Maori Expeditionary Force at Avondale. The delicacy long since; denied New Zealanders flowed north and south from the Rotorua area and Lake Taupo for eight years up to 1921. This was the time it took to solve the fisheries problem there, which concerned the rapidly falling average size of the world-famous trout to be caught in the country’s “thermal fisheries,” as they were then known. The fish had reached extraordinary size in the early years of introduction, but by the first years of the present century the 20pounders, and 15-pounders were far less common. The fish were eating themselves out of house and home. Netting programme Trout numbers were increasing, but the fish were dwindling in size. The problem began to alarm Government officials concerned to preserve the fame of the Taupo and Rotorua fisheries. They reasoned that if the overstocked lakes were netted and at least the smaller fish removed, the reduced numbers of trout would recover condition and size. The Tourist and Health Resorts Department — the body controlling the thermal fisheries at the time-netted 60 tons of trout from Lakes Rotorua and Tarawera over the 1911 and 1912 seasons, sold 15 tons of fish of reasonable quality, and buried the rest

A year later the department’s role of commercial

fisherman was assumed by the Internal Affairs Department, which embarked on a really ambitious netting and marketing programme, arranging with the Railways Department and various municipal authorities to supply individuals and retailers with so many tons a year.

That year, 1913, Auckland customers took all the fish from the Rotorua district. But Lake Taupo was being netted by that time too, ana it was arranged that Wellington receive fish, both fresh and smoked, carried “by coach from Tokaanu to Waiouru, and thence by rail to Wellington?’ Orders grew Trout first went on sale at the Auckland fish market itself just before Christmas, 1914, but it took Aucklanders some time to appreciate the delicacy. Only 751 b of trout was sold during the first three months of operations. But over the 1917 season eight tons of trout were sold in the city. During the Internal Affairs Department’s first year as the government’s fish merchant it had to meet increasing numbers of orders from towns newly envious of Aucklanders and Wellingtonians. Consignments to Christchurch were composed entirely of Rotorua fish, which were sent first to Auckland, where they were frozen, and shipped south by steamer.

Wellingtonians must have received a far better opinion of the trout than people in other centres because they could buy only Taupo trout—which were twice the size of those from the Rotorua area. By 1915, .Rotorua trout were increasing in size, and suggestions Were made that Lakes Rotoiti and Tarawera be systematically netted. The condition of Lake Taupo fish was concerning the department, even though netting operations had by then been carried on for two years, and it was decided to step up culling there considerably. Tarawera and Rotoiti were in fact netted up to the erid of the 1920 season. Operations ceased at Lake Rotorua in the 1917-18 season. Staff, boats, nets, and other equipment were transferred to the northern end of Lake Taupo. Success achieved Two launches, each with three men aboard, used to leave the wharf at Taupo at 2 p.m. each day and return between 4 a.m. and 10 am. : the following day after a netting trip of up to 30 miles. The catch would be delivered to the cleaning shed erected by the department on the Waikato river bank close to the Taupo wharf. All netting operations finished in the 1920-21 season, when the great “thermal i fisheries experiment? was . deemed to have succeeded. By then the average size of ; Taupo trout had risen to a , comforting 71b. . Over its eight seasons as . commercial fisherman and fish merchant the Internal , Affairs Department took : 238,150 trout, weighing some 260 tons —to say nothing of

the poor-conditioned fish in their thousands that must have been buried — and realised some $lB,OOO on their sale to the public. Just now, the condition of trout in the thermal fisheries is good, so don’t expect to be ordering grilled trout next time you travel on the Southerner.