Trout fishermen don’t talk today about the one that got away...

Press, 23 April 1980, Page 21

Trout fishermen don’t talk today about the one that got away...

By

PETER COMER

I From the Rakaia to the Waitaki, big, fat, securely hooked trout leap out at the traveller from roadside ! “welcome” signs.

Tourist blurbs tout Canterbury’s trout fishing as among the best in a good fishing country, drawing anglers from all over the world. Therefore, an American tourist might well expect to find the province’s snowfed lakes and rivers teeming with browns and rainbows, but his first encounter with a local

records of the old catches are not fully documented, but F. Carr Rollett wrote in 1922: “There are w'ell authenticated reports of brown trout taken in some of the southern lakes and larger rivers which weighed from 20 to 30 pounds, and it is claimed that a brown trout was taken from Lake Coleridge, Canterbury, which weighed 40 pounds. Even larger fish are said to have been caught or seen.”

angler is likely to tell him a different story — that the “good old days” of limit bags and 10kg ■ fish are gone, possibly for good. There was a time, maybe even less that. 20 years ago, when the tourist blurbs were right. Now there seems to be little doubt — noted by expert and amateur anglers alike — that the size and numbers of trout in Canterbury waters have declined sadly. The questions that have to be answered is why, and what can be done about it? Fishing in Canterbury was glorious once. Many

The writer goes on: “It was not uncommon for one man to catch over 100 . pounds weight in one day, and 60 or 70 pounds for a morning’s or an evening’s fishing was by no means rare. Most of the great catches were made with the minnow, the whitebait phantom, or gold and silver demons, at the mouths of the great snow rivers, but there was excellent fly-fishing to be had on the inland and upland waters.” Of the rainbow trout, he says: “The rainbow, like the brown trdut, during its first period reached phenomenal weights, large

numbers ranging from 25 pounds to 27 pounds.” One person who should know what has happened to the trout fishery, and what might be done about it, is Dr I. D. Blair, a former lecturer at Lincoln College. Dr Blair is water resources convener for the North Canterbury Acclimatisation Soceity, and has been a keen angler for 39 years. Throughout that time he has meticulously recorded the numbers and weights of the fish he has caught — and watched them decline.

“Whether you rate it in fish per hour or size and condition, the fishing in Canterbury is nowhere near as good as it was in the 19505,” Dr Blair says. The question facing the authorities is whether the depletion of the trout fishery is irredeemable, or whether it can be resolved.

‘‘New generations should have the same chances as we had. There is a lot of pleasure in heading out into the New Zealand countryside on an angling trip, but it is spoilt if you catch nothing, which seems to happen quite often nowadays — especially to younger and less experienced anglers.”

Dr Blair is convinced that the pressure of angling is the main reason for the end of the fabled “good old days.”

There were 7139 adult fishing licences issued by the North Canterbury Acclimatisation Society in 1972; by last season, that figure had risen to 11,325. Modern cars and tar-seal-ed roads have brought once remote and littlefished water within easy reach of all anglers. Next on the list of reason. for the decline, Dr Blair believes, is the lifting of restrictions on the methods of fishing. Like several other council members and veteran anglers, he believes the b'st remedy is to manage the trout habitat, and to restore it where it has been damaged.

“It is obvious that to maintain the trout fishery we must have suitable spawning grounds, cover, and food source. The Salmon Anglers’ Associ-

ation has made great efforts in this regard, and there is evidence that their work on spawning grounds is producing resuls,” Dr Blair says. He deplores the “bleating” of some sportsmen that irrigation and hydroelectric schemes are ruining the recreational fishery. “Public use of water re’ sources is more important, for stock, irrigation, firefighting, hydro-electric works, or whatever. Irrigation alone means hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of produce, and

the sporting fishery cannot expect the same priors ity.” Even so. anglers are not helpless in the face of development of water resources. They can stand up for their legal rights to compensation in the form of fish traps, screens, and -passes.

They can insist that when grants are sought by farmers or other groups that the Regional Water Board does its best to see there is enough flow left in a depleted watercourse to maintain the fish population.

In many cases of legitimate development, however, anglers can not expect more than just enough water to be left for fish to move upstream. The Opihi River in

South Canterbury is one of the worst examples. The irrigation draw-off during the summer is so great that the trout population has suffered badly and big rescue operations have had to be mounted in dwindling pools.

The belief that water extraction and pollution are the biggest threats to recreational fishing has turned some members of the North Canterbury Acclimatisation Society into hard-liners.

“We object to every extraction, even those for hydro works, until we know better.” the president of the society, Mr W. J. McKillop, says. The society has for some time been battling with the Ellesmere County Council over the installation of fish screens below the Te Pirita irrigation intake.

The Regional Water Board had given the council until November 30 last year to install the screens. Last month, the screens were still being built, according to the county engineer, Mr Ray Anderson.

Not all lowering of river levels is the work of man. Seepage from the Selwyn River has got worse in the last 20 years, leaving long stretches of dry stones, and has also increased in the Ashley River.

There have been heated arguments between experts about the value of

restocking trout waters with hatchery-bred fish. This was for many years regarded as the best way to maintain the fishery, but the cost is now prohibitive in many cases. Some anglers argue that predators and disease take too heavy a toll of newlyreleased fish.

“Eyed Ova” restocking is one alternative. In this method, ova are collected from hen fish, fertilised in a hatchery, then put into natural spawning grounds as soon as the “eye,” or embryo forms, thus avoiding the high cost of feeding and nurturing trout to the fingerling or yearling stage.

Occasionally, the trout fishery gets a boost from nature. This happened in the Lake Ellesmere system and the Selwyn River last year, when the fish were the best for 25 years in numbers 1 and size.

The reason appears to be that the lake mouth was open for much longer than usual — from July to the end of September — allowing swarms of big, healthy, sea-run trout, probably from the Rakaia River, to enter the lake. The sea-run thrived in Ellesmere. Many, when gutted, were found to have gorged themselves .on bullies and whitebait. “This illustrates to me what we might have if we could even halfway match the natural restocking of Ellesmere, Dr Blair says.

Some experts say that artificial restocking is needed in a few specific cases, mainly in Canterbury’s high-country lakes. These have high feed potential, but most, with the notable exception of Lake Coleridge, have poor spawning grounds. With the Wilberforce Diversion now flowing,

some anglers fear that the sediment it carries might harm or drive out the Lake Coleridge trout population. The canal, dug to boost the flow into the lake for power production, runs from the Wilberforce River, near Goat Hill, crosses the Harper Flats, and joins the Harper River before reaching the lake. At times, it has badly discoloured the lake. Both the Electricity Division and the Ministry of Works and Development are concerned about the problem, but are - not sure how to tackle it. “Research is under way, but there is not much we can do until we can measure the level of sediment, and determine if it is harmful,” an Electricity Division spokesman says. The division has even thought of mounting a camera on a hill beside Lake Coleridge to watch the effects of the canal, but the pollution seems likely to continue for some time. Veteran anglers say that in the 19505, Lake Grasmere at Cass was teeming with rainbow and brown trout of good size and quality. Recently, one angler of more than 30 year’s experience, said he had tramped the lakeshore for five hours without seeing a single fish. “I got one,” he reported, “but unfortunately for the fish it was a pure accident. I didn’t even see him.”

Lake Lyndon has been suggested as the ideal rainbow trbut *‘hatchery” for depleted lakes such as Lake Grasmere. A number of small rainbows have already been successfully transferred from one lake to the other. While it still had the Silverstream Hatchery, the North Canterbury Ac-

climatisation Society used to restock Grasmere regularly with fingerling and yearling trout. One year after being put into the lake, the fish had doubled in size. In two years they had trebled. The fish thrived, but the days of restocking in this way are gone because of the prohibitive cost, Dr Blair says. While restocking on a big scale with fingerling trout from hatcheries might be financially out of the question for most South Island acclimatisation societies, it is ironic that two of New Zealand’s best trout fisheries, Lake Taupo and Lake Rotorua, receive all -the fish they need.

Presumably to keep up their high reputation and ensure good bags for tourists, both lakes are restocked every year from hatcheries run by the wildlife division of the Ministry of Internal Affairs.

Dr Blair believes that the “put-and-take” type of restocking should not be scorned if hatchery fish could be raised cheaply enough. He says that young people could be taught to be good anglers on reservoirs and rivers which would be stocked up every year for their benefit.

Even on England’s great “snob stream,” the Test, much of the big money

that retired generals and landed gentry pay for their own stretch of water goes towards the loads of trout that are tipped into the river each year.

Dr Blair believes that the last four kilometres of the Selwyn and Ashley rivers, and the Avon, would provide ideal grounds for young anglers if stocked up. In fact, some of the fish destroyed after the outbreak of the dreaded whirling disease at the Silverstream hatchery recently were destined for the Avon. Like Dr Biair. Mr McKillop believes that the way to a thriving trout fishery lies not in large scale restocking from hatcheries, but in planned improvement of habitat and spawning grounds. He says that a handful of acclimatisation society volunteers had recently spent days clearing boulders by hand from a stream bed in the Ryton River system. No spawning trout had been counted in the stream before the work was done. Afterwards, several redds were counted on the smoothed-out stream bed within a short distance.

“The trout fishery is established’ in New Zealand, and will never be fished out, but we must try at all costs to maintain existing waters and improve the habitat," Mr McKillop says.