ANGLING IN NEW ZEALAND.

Otago Witness, Issue 3756, 9 March 1926, Page 54

ANGLING IN NEW ZEALAND.

LONDON, January 7. Er H. Van Dyke contributes to the January issue of Scribner’s Magazine an account of his fishing experiences in New Zealand last season, and extracts from his story are given in tne Fishing Gazette, whose editor says: “I have not been there, but have often wished to go, and have certainly published more about angling in New Zealand than any other body in the world. One of the interesting illustrations shows the doctor with his native Maori boy ‘Tai’—the latter is holding up on the gaff the doctor’s best trout. I wish the doctor had been wearing waders instead of his Oxford ‘Plus Fours’ and a bit over, cut off at the calf. The doctor will say when he reads this: ‘Look hore, Marston, don’t you dare to make fun of my bags. Wait till you have made bags like them—9slb, 101 b, 1151 b, and 1251 b, one evening, and a 16-pounder next morning—all on the fly.’ ” “Of my further adventures (says Dr Van Dyke) at the Hut Camp on the Tongariro River, where I met three prime anglers (Dyer of Wellington, Whitiley of Auckland, and Neilson of Poverty Bay), and caught some fine trout, as well as a vile neuritis from wading too deep and long in the snowfed stream—of the happy reunion with my sunburned offspring at Rotorua, and my kind, efficient treatment by Dr Duncan at the big bathing establishment . . . There is no need to write. It is better to consecrate the last moments of an ill-spenf article to a bit of moral advice for the gentle reader. “First, if you are addicted to the pernicious but agreeable habit of smoking, take your cigars with you when you go to New Zealand, for those that you can buy there are both dear 3nd disappointing. Second, ‘put money in thy purse’—Dominion money—for the rate of exchange on travellers cheques and 'etters of credit is simp y g.id less. Thiid, clear your mind of the fond dream of a place where you can walk down to the water any day, chuck out a line, and haul in enormous trout. There is no such place. Even if there were, you would not be happy in it. For, as o* many other things, so of angling- uncertainty is the secret charm, even in the Antipodes. “Congratulations to the doctor in getting that fish—some fish!” says Mr Marston. “I am sure that those anglers who have fished in New Zealand, or contemplate going there, or who wish they could go, will be delighted with his breezy account, which they can read in Scribner’s.”