NETTING AND SALE OF TROUT.

Press, Volume LX, Issue 11492, 27 January 1903, Page 4

NETTING AND SALE OF TROUT.

The Acclimatisation Conference did well, in our opinion, to alter the resolution which they at first passed in favour of the absolute prohibition of the netting and sale of trou',. Their -second thought","' in which they recognised that the question of netting must bs dealt with, but urged tii?

Government not to allow it except alter the fullest enquiry and under the strictest

legulation and (supervision, is decidedly better. The anglers undoubtedly have

rights; no one wants to deprive them of ttwrru. but. the non-anglmg public ought also to be considered. Lake Ellesmere— to take the case of chief interest to Canterbury—is admittedly full of trout, and the local fishermen, who are hanging on to the dwindling flounder fishery, are constantly bringing them up in their nets. They may not legally cell them, yet it is an accepted fact that somehow quantities of trout, never caught with rod and line, are consumed by local residents, while some fish occasionally come to Chrifitchurch. The Ellesmere fishermen are perfectly willing to pay a, license fee for the right to net trout, and another fee for the right to sell them, during the period of the angling eea-son, and to (submit to the most- stringent regulations. It ia surely not beyond the wit of the Government Inspector and the Acclimatisation Societies to devise some plan by which the fishing can be conserved, and at the same time the teeming trout in our rivers may be drawn Ufson to some extent for the tables of the non-angling public. Under the present system of total prohibition, poaching and the illicit sale of fish are as rampant as sly-grog selling in a prohibition State of America. There is far more danger to the angling interest 'from the

dynamiting that goes on in some of our rivers than there would be from the legalised netting and sale of trout under proper restrict ions. The Acclimatisation Societies should endeavour to fall in with the wishes of the public iv this respect, and devote a good dead more attention to the detection and punishment of poaching in future than they have done in the past.