GOING FISHING with Kotare

Press, Volume CXV, Issue 33965, 4 October 1975, Page 11

GOING FISHING with Kotare

Sloppy socks, creased shorts down to his knees, tie all over the place, and a beaming smile below fair hair topped with an odd cap — was this Guy Mannering of Christchurch? It was indeed. But the photograph had been taken a great many years ago. The small boy was holding up the sharp end of a long gaff. At the other end another boy, almost certainly Guy’s older brother John, helped to bear the weight of a huge salmon supended from the centre of the gaff.

The nose of the 341 b Rakaia quinnat rested on the ground. The end of its tail stood higher than young Guy’s shoulder. The picture was taken by Guy’s father. Mr G. E. Mannering. who was already a good amateur photographer. He was to become a very accomplished one. But photography was only one of a range of activities at which he excelled. As a respected banker he might have been expected to be somewhat staid. Nothing could have been further from the truth.

Oh yes, he was a golfer, which might have been expected. But he made substantial reputations at various times as a fine concert tenor, an excellent shbt, a highly experienced mountaineer, and a daring canoeist. Banking duties And from the age of 30 he was an especially enthusiastic troutfisherman, who took every opportunity his banking duties allowed to fish in the several New Zealand districts to which his career took him. For many years I had been vaguely aware of a

book supposedly setting down some 50 years of fishing experience in New Zealand. But no title I could find took me any closer to tracking down the book, let alone the author.

But the proprietor of a second-hand bookshop who by necessity knows his New Zealand literature like the back of his hand sent me a card wanting to know whether 1 would be interested in a book by G. E. Mannering called “Eighty Years in New Zealand. Embracing Fifty Years of New Zealand Fishing.” The mystery was solved. A quarter of Mr Mannering’s book is devoted to what was presumably the sport he loved best. It ranges over the 50 years between 1892 and ”1942. and begins on the Lower Selwyn. Selwyn fishing With his friend William Izard, Mannering spent a whole day fishing the Lower Selwyn. It was his first try at trout, and he caught nothing. But neither did Izard. And neither did two experienced fisherman they met there in the evening. W. H. Spackman. no less. New Zealand’s first angling-book author, and Spackman’s friend Mr A. M. Ollivier. The next day, the four took only one trout between them. It was caught by Mannering. He had floated a bully down to a gathering of trout and when one of them took the bait and ran off nearly all the line from the reel, he had to yell for his friend, who landed it for the new convert. It weighed 3Jlb. That occasion began Mannering's enchantment with trout-fishing. Five years later he moved to Hastings for the bank and was taught the arts of spinning and fly-casting by a skilful English fisher-

man living there, Mr W. T. Sabin. He became a keen seafisherman too, especially for kahawai. which he took with minnows made from hom or toothbrush - handles, and wrecked his trout-fishing gear in the process. The Vlauawaii Mannering fished the Manawatu at times between 1897 and 1902. With Mr W. H. Galwey. who was also new to the sport. Mannering fished grasshoppers to the brown trout at Makotuku. catching fish averaging about 21b. In those days he found the best Manaw’tu fishing at Kumeroa and Oringi. although on one occasion when Mannering and his friend Claude Mackie visited the headwaters of a Manawatu tributary, the Mangaatoro, they took 93 fish in seven hours. They w:ere fishing water first stocked, not very manv years earlier, by Captain Hamilton (whose book. "Trout-fishing and Sport in Maoriland.” appeared in 1904. 12 years after Spackman’s) The two fishermen caught their 93 fish, which averaged less than 11b. on the natural brown beetle. And they discovered. incidentally, that the big thunderstorm they fished through at one stage had not the slightest effect on the enthusiasm of the trout. Upstream ininnou In those days, bankers were apparently moved up — or at least moved on — every five years Mannering found himself in New Plymouth for the five years up to 1907, and within a short time had discovered exciting fishing in the Waiwakaiho. His first reconnaissance with a grasshopper rewarded him with a 7|lb rainbow.

Later, closer to the sea in the same river, he took a lOjlb brown trout on a smelt given him by two whitebating Maori women. Mannering was transferred to Timaru in 1907, and confounded the locals with his skill with the upstream minnow, catching far more fish in this wav than they could with their wet or dry flies. The minnow, he recalls. was pure murder in the Opihi, so he gave it up and took to what he calls real fishing — dryfly fishing, a method which continued to fascinate him for the rest of his fishing life. His return to the South Island was followed by a lengthier period up north again. which resulted in some writing of rare interest on the fishing at Lake Taupo. He drove there for the first time from Napier in 1911 in his little De Dion, and fished there repeatedly up to 1919. through the four years of netting operations conducted to reduce the numbers of rainbows and therefore increase the average size. But in 1911 the fish were still of great size. Mannering and his friend Dr Nairn fished from an anchored boat at the mouth of the Waitahanui one day and came back with nine rainbows weighing 971 b, largest 141 b Day* gone Altogether, G. E. Mannering’s survey of his fishing experiences in many parts of New Zealand in the early days is of absorbing interest, and the photographs embodied with the text make any present-day angler’s eves pop. We shall not see those days again, and more is the pity, but without such records the angling scene in New Zealand to my mind anyway, would be much the poorer.