by Tony Orman
Good, clean habitat is vital in the task of restoring ailing salmon and trout fisheries in the eastern South Island says a former North Canterbury Fish and Game councillor Don Lorking in his submission to the council.
“Hatcheries have a role to play but do not lose sight of the fact that habitat in rivers and streams is vital and paramount, i.e. in both quantity and quality with clean water with good flows and not contaminated by high nitrate levels,” he said.
Don Lorking has been a trout and salmon licence holder for over 70 years and has witnessed the decline in the public’s freshwater fisheries in the last few decades.
“Fishermen and women used to stand shoulder to shoulder as at Tentburn and and rivers like the Waimakariri in order to catch any salmon be it wild or hatchery bred,” he recalled. “Invariably they do it to feed families. Any fish is better than no fish. Anglers also do it for the thrill of catching a great fish,”.
He said the number of fishermen standing together at the Tekapo canals in the Mackenzie Basin reflected the “substantial loss of ready-to-harvest salmon at river mouths”, with anglers because of the scarcity of salmon coming in from the sea, now heading inland to the Mackenzie basin.
Warning in 2000
Don Lorking said the crisis now with the public’s trout and salmon fisheries was not unexpected as in 2000 North Canterbury’s Fish and Game environmental officer Wayne McCallum warned of an immediate crisis around the decline of Canterbury’s lowland fisheries.
“Significantly that was 25 years ago,” he said. “Relating to that warning by Wayne McCallum 25 years ago, we can’t keep saying, “She’ll be right” and hope it will be. We need to get into gear.”
The irrigation required for the dairy industry has taken so much of the water from the rivers they are now warm, full of nitrates and depleted. The fish screens did not work for many years and the smolt were lost in the paddocks.
“Are they working now?”
Trawler Ban
Commercial sea trawlers operating off river mouths need to be kept in check and not target the salmon and then be allowed to sell it as bycatch.
“Trawlers should be banned from inshore trawling around river mouths in those months when salmon are tending to congregate prior to ascending rivers to spawn,” said Don Lorking.
He suggested hatcheries should be reopened with volunteers as in previous days with no labour costs to Fish and Game.
Not a Solution
Catch-and-release is not an option to the crisis as there is a significant risk of many dying from mishandling. He pointed to overseas research particularly in North America on Atlantic salmon which strongly suggests that many fish caught and released do not spawn due to stress levels.
“Like many other anglers – virtually shareholders in the business of North Canterbury Fish and Game – my gear of reels, rods, ticers, zeddies and Colorado’s sit waiting for the day when anglers can go out again with the knowledge that the fisheries are healthy and supporting healthy salmon populations again,” he concluded.
Don Lorking with a salmon of yesteryear
Back in 1997-8 the season was classed as a poor one for the South island salmon fishery. An article on the Fishing website back then said one chap told of an Akaroa trawler landed 60 tonnes of snapper in a single trip. Yes it may well have been a strong factor, but the paramount reason is the loss of habitat (clean, fully flowing rivers) as Don Lorking points out.
He recalls the warning in 2000 by North Canterbury Fish and Game’s scientist Wayne McCallum. I think it’s fair to say NC F@G let that warning gather dust?
Don Lorking is so correct in his assessment of habiutat being the key. Nitrate contamination is toxic to aquatic life so surely the obvious is when the young smolt descend the river to go to sea, there is no food for them?
Habitat issues are a major factor but so also is the philosophy of the F&G managers. Their purist attitude to smolt releases is based on overseas data relating to “native” endemic fisheries where to releases have “interfered with” the genetics and spawning success rates of the native fish. Salmon are NOT native to New Zealand and there is no logical reason for not supporting the downturn with commercially grown smolt. The size of salmon currently in the canals, if caught in the river mouths, would gladden the heart of any salmon angler. I’m sure Don Lorking would agree. The accompanying photo appeared in CSI news on 15 Jan 2026 (Caught in the canals by Conner Cavaney.)
Doc2
I fully agree with Rex Gibson. He echoes the views of most current and former salmon anglers. Bring back stocking!!!
Nitrate is unlikely to be an issue in Canterbury’s large braided rivers. It is the eggs and fry that are the life stage that are vulnerable.
Nitrate is an issue for hatcheries sited on lowland groundwater sourced streams.
The critical habitats are the limited High Country spawning streams which have suffered from intensification of farming due to privatization of once public land held as long term grazing leases and from overseas ownership where the OIO make the sale of High Country farms conditional on investing to increase productivity on these vulnerable soils. Eutrophication of High Country lakes from fertilizer applications, sediment from cultivation, and higher stocking rates are now evident across many landscapes that until fairly recent times were lightly grazed.
Massive water abstraction for irrigation has created physical and temperature barriers to the upstream migration of adult salmon. Even High Country properties use irrigation.
Warmer water means a higher food requirement for juvenile salmon migrating downstream.
Defoiliating broad swathes of braided river fairways with aerial applications of fertilizer removes cover and destroys soil ecology eliminating much of the terrestrial insects the young salmon need to feed on.
The defoliation changes the braid character resulting in less slower flowing deep holes that provided shelter and cover for growing fish
Agricultural encroachment has seen river margins with critical springs and seeps, the most productive parts of the middle and lower braids, obliterated by river works to protect newly developed dairy land on the flood plains at the margins.
Add inadequate fish screens and it becomes very obvious that the freshwater stages of salmon’s life history has been massively affected.
Both F&G and ECan are captured by agribusiness interests. Both fail to acknowledge the harm irrigation has done in the interests of “the economy”.
Hell we cannot even protect the public from drinking Nitrate polluted water, let alone acknowledge our stuffed fisheries.
CSI and NC F&G will ultimately disappear like the fisheries they have failed so badly.
Error
Fairways sprayed with herbicides not fertilizer.
Very high application rates of glyphosate designed to kill woody plants mixed with toxic surfactants – ecocide, now a requirement to compensate for reduced rivers flows being unable to transport the millions of tons of shingle eroded into headwater catchments.
4 years on and nothing – shows just how useless F&G are – they don’t give a toss – From the 10-year management plan approved 2022
14.1.1 Key action to be completed by the end of the first year after plan approval includes:
• Update CSI Fish & Game Council’s Sea Run Salmon Management Plan in consultation with licence holders and other regions managing sea run salmon populations.
The previous management plan had expired and had not achieved its intended outcomes.
In February 2022, the Council approved the following motion:
“THAT THE OWP BE AMENDED TO EXPEDITE AN IMMEDIATE REVIEW OF THE 2012 SALMON MANAGEMENT PLAN.”
And that’s it, nothing has happened in the last 4 years, the fishery is on its knees, F&G aren’t following through on their management plans, and aren’t keeping anglers updated, it’s one shambles after another.