RECORD TROUT FISHING .

Grey River Argus, 25 April 1907, Page 1

RECORD TROUT FISHING .

SUCCESS OF A VISITING ANGLER Mr A. G. Campbell, a well-known English angler, who has fished pretty well all over the world, has given some details of his angling experience on the Tongariro river to the New Zealand Times. Mr Campbell is a man of deeds, not of words, and il is with the greatest difficulty that he can be induced ito talk about his own expliots. The Tongariroriver has it source amongst the snows- of the volcano of Rapehu, and flows in>to Ijajce Taupo, near the little village of Tokaanu. Mr Campbell says it is the finest -.brown trout river in the world, and there can 'be no doubt that he speaks the truth One of his catches on a recent night at Tokaanu was twenty-two fish, which weight 230N3. On another evening, he caught twelve fish, weighing i6Bl'b. He caught most of his fish with an artificial minnow, but latterly he secured quite a number with artificiall fly, a ihuge fly bigger than a salmon fly, but, ashe himself says, it was more like a chicken than a fly,", and rthe trout probably mistook it for amonnoiiv, a crayfish, or something of that sort. Anyhow, it was just a feathered monstrosity, and .there was no fly like it in the district. Mr Campbell made a. very close study of the lower reaches of the Togg.ariro river, and of the ■habits of die big fish that run up it from the great lake. The bigest fish weighed 231113, and was caught with a fly. It is probably that the biggest trout ever caught with a fly anywhere in the world. Mr Campbell likes New Zealand. He has been here before, and will probably come back again for the fishing. '"The trout fishing in many of your rivers," said Mr Campbell; "is more like the salmon fishing at Home, and I have known learned professors who couild not indentify your brown trout, so wonderfully have those fish changed." Mr Campbell does not, howeVer, think that our trout will always be big. It often happens that when a river or lake is first stacked with trout the hfirst generation or two attain prodigious size on acount of the abundance of food and the .absence of enemies in the rivers. At Home, iwihere the trout are mature, there are many enemies Which prey upon them. One of the principal foes which the trout in most parts of New Zealand have to con tend with is the eel, but for some mys terious reason the big eels "which pene trate to the upper waiters of most of the rivers in the colony, omly. run a short distance up the Waikato, and con sequently in the Rotorua and Taupo district they have no enemy worse than the shag. Mr Campbell has noticed that the trout in some places are deteriorating through over-stocking. In Lake Rotorua and in the Waikato river, below the Australian rapids, it is most noticeable-. The danger rim New Zeialand in the future will, he says, be that of overstocking. . He does not think that rod fishing will ever be sufficient to keep down the humlbers, and believes it a great mistake to limit the "number of weight of fish a map may. talce with the rod", except ; in the" neighbourhood of large towns. iHe advocate the res-srioted-use of net in those -plaices where over-stocking is rife. This, he says, would be beitte rthan rod fishing, because if the decrease depends entirely on the rod then in time to come a generation of trout .-will foe developed that has descended from fish that have systematically avoided the angler, and the habit of • refusing the angler's bait become hereditary . As to the -weights of the Togariro fish he caught, they averaged nib each, and one in every -twenty or thirty would weight 20b or over. He caught fish in one night averaged i^lfe each, and on another ocasion twelve, averaging. 14.1 b each.; This, he says, is larger than any thing to foe got in the South Island, and probably .larger than any brown trout to be obtained in any Other river in the world.