WITH ZANE GREY

Evening Post, Volume CXI, Issue 19, 23 January 1926, Page 8

WITH ZANE GREY

DEEP-SEA FISHING IN THE

NORTH

PLANS FOB THE TRIP,

Mr. A. H. Messenger, Government Publicity Officer, together with one of the Government cinematographers, left Wellington to-day to join Mr. Zane Grey, the eminent author and sportsman, at the Bay of Islands. The Government is co-operating with Mr. Grey in the obtaining of cinematograph films depicting his experiences with the swordfish. This film will be released throughout ' the world, and with Mr. Grey as the central figure, should prove a splendid publicity medium for New Zealand. Mr. Grey is specially staging the picture for showing locally.

According to the "New Zealand Herald," a fishing camp is to be established by Mr. Zane Grey and his party near Cape Brett, possibly at Deep Water Cove, and they will make their headquarters there for the next two or three months. Mr. Grey wili be accompanied by Mr. C. Alma Baker and his wife and daughter. All the fishing and camping gear of the two partiea will be assembled at Eussell, and when arrangements for the camp near the fishing grounds have been completed the sportsmen will take up their quarters in readiness for the weeks of offshore fishing. They do not propose to confine their operations to the area immediately surrounding the Cape, but will go out as far as the launch men will take them, in the hope that they will be able to raise some of the bigger fish they believe are to be found there. They will later work down to Mercury Bay and probably to Mayor Island, and have discussed plans for a survey of the grounds between the Bay of Islands and the North Cape, although this will necessitate the use of a larger boat than at present appears to be available.

Mr. Baker has long held a theory that beyond the edge of the Pacific shelf, where the bottom of the sea drops to an extreme depth, about fifteen miles off Cape Brett, many very large fish may be found, and provided suitable, conditions are met with the party will no doubt make,an attempt to prove the correctness of this view. A large vessel, preferably a handy schooner, would make the task easier, as she could act as a mother-ship to the launches. The risk of venturing so far from the land in a launch, relying only on her single engine, is very real, as in the event: of a breakdown and a shift of wind to the west, the party would be left in an uncomfortable position. Mr. Grey is laying his plans to return to Auckland about the beginning of May, so that he can see the screening of his story "Wild Horse Mesa," one of his own favourites. He proposes then to go to Taupo, where he will fish some of the trout streams in that region.