Some Days and Nights and the Forthcoming election

by Tony Orman

If you asked any trout fisher what makes a good fishing day or night, you’d probably encounter varying answers. Some particularly younger anglers, measure success by numbers of trout. Others by a few or even one fish and even a big one that got away.

A night I won’t forget in a hurry was a few summers ago during the brown beetle hatch November and early December. The trout can go bonkers over brown beetles falling into the water during a warm twilight. On the Opawa River near the outskirts of Blenheim I tossed a Humpy size 12 (good brown beetle imitation) upstream from a gently rising fish and hooked into a brown trout that I played for a good 20 minutes. In the clear, spring-like water I dared a glimpse at the fish with the torch and saw the brown was huge. I lost it in the end when the leader passed under a sunken manuka stick embedded in to stream’s silty bed.  I won’t forget that night.

Early successes are memorable because they can mean a sudden leap forward in both technique and confidence. I recall a twilight on Hawkes Bay’s Maraetotara River – once a magnificent brown trout river but reportedly now a shadow of its former quality. On that evening the trout began to rise and I tried dry fly after dry fly until I used an Orange Spinner dry and it scored fish after fish after fish, in all three splendid browns. What was important I discovered dry fly fishing was no great mystery or unattainable.

Then there are mistakes such as fluffing a golden chance. I still smile at a big brown I eventually fooled on the Matakitaki River.  It was the leadup to the success that was comical. I was using a large black bivisible dry fly given me by a kindly angler I met, George Broome from the Hutt Valley. I put the big fly over a likely run and a big, dark shape materialised under it, opened it’s mouth and lazily took the fly. My heart thudding, I tightened far too quickly and whisked the fly out!

I cast again and the fish rose up again and again I tightened far too early. I sat down and tried to compose myself. I had a severe attack of “buck, no I mean lunker, fever”.  So I waited a couple of minutes inwardly instructing myself to wait the mandatory “one, two three” and put the fly upstream again.

Amazingly the trout came again and I waited and then tightened. It went over 3 kgs (7 lbs.)

Too Serious

Some anglers cannot laugh at themselves and they take trout fishing far too seriously to the point of being competitive. This stern attitude seems more prevalent at Taupo. Frankly a competitive angler is a boor. They want to compete, score more than you do and will indulge in “put downs” not unlike sledging in cricket. You might liken them to their counterparts in cricket like, well yes Shane Warne, Glen McGrath and Adam Parore.

If you’re not into cricket, take my word for it.

I remember a couple of nights at Whakaipo Bay near Taupo when I encountered an expert, an immigrant from Europe who was also a well known figure in trout fishing circles. Why he’d written a book! But then so had I (“Trout with Nymph” ). So too did did Roger Douglas, Rob Muldoon and Richard Prebble – hardly good company.  Undoubtedly my Whakaipo Bay “friend”  was a good angler but he was vociferous and free with advice –  whether you wanted it or not.

Even in the dark, his advice was constant. He took to criticising me. The slow sinker line I used was useless I was told. The trout were hard going, so perhaps his constant talking-down-to-me did his ego good? Perhaps he was God’s Gift to Trout Fishing? Perhaps he got verbally beaten by his wife and so turned on fellow anglers?

After 20 minutes I was getting fed up with his babbling. He had no fish. Nor did I. Then suddenly I had a take. I tightened into a solid fish and landed it.

“Ach! Lucky one!” he snorted derisively.

I was smiling. The Fishing Gods were having fun. I went back to fishing just daring to hope they’d reward me again. And they did. I landed a second rainbow of 2 kgs. I heard an audible grunt or was it a snarl from my “companion.” He hooked one but the Gods decreed he deserved to lose it. It got off.

Ten minutes later, I hooked another and I let the trout run, the fly reel’s ratchet music to my ears but harsh to the other. I landed the fine rainbow and my learned “friend” was sulky and stomped off, grumbling obscenities to himself.

Spring Creek

Now that was a memorable night although I detest competitive fishing. The Piscatorial Gods had taken the “mickey” out of the conceited fellow.

I remember fishing a small spring creek tributary of the Waikato with another nationally known angler who had written a book or two on trout fishing. I hadn’t fished for a few months due to work commitments and being in Wellington. My casting was rusty. But he was into the competition thing. He scoffed at my casting but at the end of the evening rise I had two browns although not big, and he had none for all his slick casting and sledging.

But now it’s no real big deal whether I score a few trout or even don’t. Catching a trout is not so important as just going out there. This season the weather has been wretched, rain, flooded rivers and cool easterlies. But I’ve been out a few times and with the Wairau River high and brown, I sought a Northbank tributary called Top Valley.  I had a most enjoyable morning with my labrador Jive but I didn’t catch a fish.

But it’s interesting and sobering just to compare that day with the 1970s when I fished Top Valley and used to catch three or four fish anywhere from two to three kgs each. And Geoff a local chemist and skilled fly fisher somewhere about the 1980s caught a double figure brown, i.e. one over 10 pounds. Top Valley was then a ”beaut”.

When I returned to Marlborough about 1992, I naturally headed back up to Top Valley and was shocked. A monoculture of pines had been planted in much of the watershed and the stream sapped by water-thirsty pines, seemed half its original size.

The stream no longer had the velocity to flush shingle and form pools. And the pines would have caused a chemical modification to acidic and thus less invertebrate trout tucker would be available. In other words the “trout carrying capacity” had been slashed and holding water (pools) reduced dramatically.

And the clearance for forestry and clear felling for harvesting would have resulted in increased runoff with high silt  load.

Which leads me to an article I came across in a now defunct magazine, “Southern Fishing And Boating.” Thirteen years ago in the November 2000 issue of the magazine  Wayne McCallum, North Canterbury Fish and Game’s Environment officer, outlined a crisis facing New Zealand’s lowland waterways.

Describing it as “a wholesale crisis,” Wayne  identified the problem as “a decline of trout densities across a mounting list of New Zealand’s lowland waterways.”

He cited the “on-going tragedy of the Selwyn River brown trout fishery” where, in the 1940s, trapping of the Selwyn’s spawning run, conservatively estimated numbers of well above 40,000 fish but by 1985 (the last time the run was counted) , the recorded figure was a staggering low 309 fish.

He identified the demise of the extensive rappia weed beds in Lake Ellesmere , water pollution, sewage, abstraction of water and drainage works as likely adverse factors.

Horokiwi Study

Then he looked at the Horokiwi Stream near Wellington. In the 1950s, the Horokiwi was the focus of a comprehensive and notable trout stream study by K Radway Allen. Radway Allen measured trout densities in excess of 70 fish per cubic 10 metres along the main reaches of the stream. But a NIWA study  done about 2000 was a shock – trout had become virtually non-existent in the waterway. 

In other words the trout population had gone from a healthy state to being virtually extinct in little over 50 years. Wayne McCallum said in 2000 pointing the finger at local body and central government, that “perhaps the biggest factor causing frustration is the failure to acknowledge the existence of a crisis at all.“

But I would dare to extend the blame further at the risk of provoking defensive reactions and ire. Fish and Game generally speaking, seemed to turn a blind eye to Wayne McCallum’s report. There was silence – no followup.

I concede willingly they have endeavoured by a somewhat confrontational campaign of blaming “dirty dairying” as a cause. But dairying cannot be blamed for all numerical declines of trout in all waters. Some rivers just don’t have any or significant dairying in their watersheds.

In recent years Dr Peter Trolove has sampled the nitrate concentrations in Canterbury rivers and creeks. Nitrates come from various sources but a main one is dairying. Nitrates are toxic to fish and aquatic life generally. Currently the trout and salmon fisheries are in dire trouble. Yet Wayne mcCallum’s warning 26 years ago was not heeded. And since his warning, John Key’s National government seized state control of Environment Canterbury and encouraged the intensification of dairying particularly the corporate kind.

The then Minister for the Environment Nick Smith was a central figure in the state takeover of ECan. How ironic that was.

In the case of Top Valley I identified a forestry monoculture. I have never read of Fish and Game taking forestry practices to task. What spraying of chemicals do forestry companies do? 

Chemical Cocktail

Then there are chemicals like Dew 600  (diazinon), the replacement chemical for DDT, and widely used. It according to informed sources, is “lethal to aquatic life.” There are other chemicals used on or near waterways. Diquat is commonly used by councils to rid streams of aquatic weeds. Destructive really, because aquatic weed beds in streams particularly spring creeks are food factories for trout and native fish, being home for koura, freshwater shrimps, crustaceans and other life. No food – no fish.

Some declare 1080 poison topdressed over whole catchments by agencies such as the Department of Conservation and TbFree NZ is damaging, directly or indirectly. Certainly a U-tube filmed by Steve and Clyde Graf shows koura on toxic baits and eels eating poisoned carcasses plus mayfly nymphs on baits that fell into streams. Remember 1080 was first developed as an insecticide. It kills any living creature from insects to animals if enough is ingested. If a non-fatal dose is taken, it weakens a creature reportedly even eroding its reproduction capabilities.

Are trout rivers getting “a cocktail of chemicals” as I term it?

DoC AWOL

Where is the Department of Conservation on this? Oh yes, I forgot spreading 1080 even on trampers! Some years ago DoC dumped 1080 laced pellets on a guide and his client in the Mohikinui River in North West Coast.

Back to Fish and Game. It’s in a delicate position. Firstly its beholden to the Minister of Conservation and government. Secondly it has the essential task of selling trout fishing licences for annual income. So going public on a “wholesale crisis” and as Wayne McCallum put it “a decline of trout densities across a mounting list of New Zealand’s lowland waterways,”  is not positive publicity about trout fishing and hardly designed to sell licences.

But in almost three decades years since Wayne McCallum’s report, nothing much appears to have been done in many fish and game regions or at a national level.

Can we afford to wait another for another three decades?

November 7 is election day and anglers should be asking parties and candidates hard questions.

The NZ Federation of Freshwater Anglers is on the verge of sending political parties searching questions about their attitudes to clean rivers, nitrates (toxic to trout and salmon) and wilderness areas. The answers will be very interesting!