CHEAP SPORT.

Hokitika Guardian, 11 March 1924, Page 4

CHEAP SPORT.

• A C'OLLKCTiOX OF IDIOTS.” WEI.LIXOTOX, -March fi ‘You've got a glorious country, magnificent scenery, line climate, great soil, and the best people I have ever struck, but from a financial point of view you are a unique collection of idiots.” I The above remark was made recently to Mr C. 1. Dasont, secretary of the 'Wellington Acclimatisation Society. by an American sportsman. “\Ve come down here for a trip,” said the American, “figuring to spend •1000 or 5000 dollars. We want to fish vour waters, and when we ask you how much it costs for the privilege you say £l. It’s too absurd. If you said £25 or even double that, to fish the whole of the Dominion, we would cheerfully pay. I think it a fair thing —more than a fair tiling after than before, for you have trout-fishing here second to none in the world And to think that you can fish for j seven months for a fee of five dollars—-j really, its’s too absurd. You’ve got I it all valued wrong. People from I overseas who come here to fish expect-j to pay for it. Your £1 license is j ridiculous.” Mr Dnsent is quite aware : how foolishly small our license fees' seem to travellers from other eoun-j tries. Mr Whitney, of Auckland, on a j recent trip to the Old Country, wished to fish, and for a limited stretch of water lie and his wife had to pay £l5O each for five weeks’ fishing, and then they did not have the water to themselves, whilst six weeks’ deerstalking in Scotland would run into hundreds of pounds. A man had to give away more in tips to the attendants in one day than he would have to pay for a season’s stalking license in Xdw Zealand,