A GLORIOUS "FIRST"

Evening Post, Volume CXXVI, Issue 80, 1 October 1938, Page 10

A GLORIOUS "FIRST"

FINE ANGLING WEATHER

BIG INCREASE IN RODS

Comparatively low and clear rivers greeted anglers today for the first of the angling season, while the most hated visitation, a high wind, was absent all the morning. The conditions were ideal, and all streams, owing to the 40-hour week, were well patronised. The results should prove the claims that the Wellington district streams are well stocked with trout.

It is held by authorities in pisciculture that he natural spawning is far more productive of young trout than the artificial method of stripping in hatcheries and releasing eyed ova, but the increased leisure now available to nearly all sections of the community has turned weekends into two full days instead of one-and-a-half. On two mornings a week, therefore, anglers may set off in tneir cars and be fishing by 7 a.m. or 8 a.m. on waters fifty miles from home. The 40-hour week has in fact doubled the number of rods on the water, and stocking may prove needed where before it was a moot point whether it was needed or not Shags, eels, seagulls, and other enemies of trout notwithstanding, man was always the worst depleter of streams, because he takes adult fish only, the fish that would themselves replenish the stock. With the increased demands by anglers on the trout population and the ravages on the spawn and younger fish by birds and eels, it will not be surprising if few anglers succeed in taking limits after the .first few weeks of coming season!, - . -