WHITEBAITING

Hokitika Guardian, 30 August 1929, Page 8

WHITEBAITING

WORTH £IO,OOO A YEAR

f (Auckland Star.)

When you buy your tumblerful of whitebait at the fishmongers for sixpence it may interest you to know that the tiny fish means £IO,OOO a season to the Maoris on the Lower Waikato. Last Monday £IOO was paid out, and the total for the week would have been about £OOO but 'for the floods. Tin: season is late, and so far has not been at all a good one,-but as it lasts three months there is plenty of time for r recovery. Fish are so scarce just at the moment that the price on the river is two shillings a pound, compared with the sixpence, or even fourpence, a pound at/the flush of the season. Whitebaiting is a very picturesque business. It is entirely in the hands of the Maoris, who go down the river from their homes round Tuakau to camp on the banks of the river. This migration reminds one of the summer exodus of the London East-enders to the Kent hopfields. Up the Waikato the whole family goes—even the dogs, and two faithful but unlovely “ kuri ” might have been seen yesterday calmly perched in an did willow tree, roosting like fowls, sleeping in the sun, for it was the only dry spot except the family whare. The river is in flood' just now, and one understood why all the whares of the fishers were on piles.

A “ Star ” representative made the trip to the fishing grounds yesteiday with Mr Ted Frost as cicerone, and that was fortunate, as the family has been on the river for' forty years, and he knows both the pakeha and Maori history of the river, which is quite as storied as the Rhine when you hear it —traces of the army of Red Coats which fought in the ’sixties; a raid by Hongi Hika. and his seven war canoes full of braves; the- first to be armed with guns: the last tribal fight on the Lower Waikato (about 1839); and the old mission station of Maunsell when the riverine Maoris were numbered in their thousands.

FISHING CAMPS. With the spring the whitebait begin to come up the Waikato from the sea, and then the Maori locks up his “town house ” and goes camping. About fifteen miles from Tuakau towards the heads the river is a maze pf low islands and low banks, most of the land adjacent to the river being swampy. At intervals along the banks, a quarter of a mile or so, the Maoris run up temporary whares or 'shacks and there will spend the next three months. They have not forgotten the lore of the wild life and make themselves comfortable where a mere pakeha would die of ennui or bronchitis. The whare is a very modest affair, just a framework of poles with walls and roof of raupo, wood, old iron, or even sacks. Built right on the edge of the low, swampy banks? liable to flooding, these whares are raised on rough piles of willow or other handy wood, and remind one of pictures of a lake duelling, or one of those water villages on piles at Singapore.

Just now with the river in flood the whares are marooned, and the family is confined to even closer quarters than the admiral’s quarter-deck—just the whare (eight feet square), a small verandah platform in front, ancf the narrow jetty running parallel with the current, from which the fishing is done. These jetties are only about twelve feet long by eighteen inches wide, made of stakes and dubbed tree trunks, and the river face of the jetty is wattled with raupo, manuka or other material to prevent the fish running under; so that they must all pass the fisher waiting at the end of the jetty. The fisher has to watch hour after hour as the fish run intermittently, and for his accommodation has built a little sentry box at the end of the jetty. To. shelter him from the cold west and south winds the box is built like a sedan chair, with the front knocked out. It lias a seat, and on the river side there is an opening (some with a neat little penthouse), so that as you pass down the river you see the watchers looking out of these odd little constructions, just like people peering out of a railway carriage window. The usual name for the whitebait in Maori is “ inanga,” but the Lower .. aikato Maoris invariably call it

matamata.” There is a somewhat similar fish, only much larger, called “ porohe,” which the Maoris dry in the sun and use for their own menu. Cooking is done in a corrugated iron affair at one end of the whare, looking exactly like a,n outsize meat safe. For their stoi’es the Maoris depend on Mr Frost’s launch, which at regular intervals makes the round of the fishing camps, leaves groceries and things, and picks up the fish that have been taken. ,Also at Turanganui, the only settlement in the vicinity, there is a store kept by an Indian youth, who must occasionally be surprised to find himself in such' a lonely spot after Bombay, with its teeming myriads—for that sunny Indian city was his birthplace. , , For firewood the Maori use the alder, or “ raukau-pakeha ” (the pakeha’s tree), which in the last few years has spread wonderfully. It started from Cambridge and is now well-established right down to the Waikato Heads. The willow-fringed banks of the river, and the wide-spread swamp lands and .islands studded with cabbage trees, and backed by the high hills on the southern side, give the Lower Waikato a very distinct character, and when the willows are ont these reaches must be Very lovely.

CUNNING DEVICE

In taking the whitebait, the Maoris use big “ kaka ” or nets, made of a strong muslin netting. They are shaped like a huge jelly bag. The mouth is kept open by an oval ring made of supplejack or willow, being sft or so by 3ft. The ring is attached to a light kahikatca pole about Bft. long, and with /this, apparatus the fisherman or fisherwoman (and they seemed in the majority) dips into the water alongside t'-ie jetty whenever the fish run. Being translucent, the fish would be quite invisible, even at a little distance below the surface, and in order to make them show up the Maori uses an ingenious device. A cabbage tree, when peeled of its bark, i f s as white as paper. One of these white trunks is set in the water, about a foot below the surface, and jutting out into the river for about oft. As tnc whitebait pass over the white they are plainly visible to the watcher in her little sedan chair, and then there is a loud call for the nets! to get to work. .Just now the whitebaiters have difficulty in getting any fish a,t all owing to the state of the river, but later in the season, when they run freely, the canneries will get to work, and the price will drop from 2s to possibly 4d a lb. Canning whitebait is different from any other kind of canning, and before Mr Frost’s 'father made a success of it he spoiled 25,000 tins. That is one of the penalties of pioneering. It is canning that helps to swell the season’s cheque to the big sum of £IO,OOO.