THE MOUNTAIN TROUT AND OTHER FISH

Otago Daily Times, Issue 22987, 16 September 1936, Page 4

THE MOUNTAIN TROUT AND OTHER FISH

ro THE EDITOH

Sir,—l read with much interest Mr David H. Graham's article in last Saturday's issue concerning the mountain trout and also the fish that produces young fish similar to the whitebait. The mountain trout are in the small streams that run into the west side of Lake Wanaka. I used to see shoals of them in the little lagoon at the entrance of Cattle Flat, but if trout have been introduced there they will most likely have been exterminated by this time. There are always some at the foot of the waterfalls on the left on entering the Cattle Flat. All that I saw were about three inches long and slender, and, I should say, of a brownish colour, with very small black spots. Underneath the skin on top of the head the colour was red. which was seen through the skin. If they were swimming up stream, and came to a little cataract, about a foot or so high, which they were unable to jump, they would come ashore and wriggle past the obstruction.

In the early days there were three kinds of small native fish in the Upper Clutha, and possibly in the Hawea River,

viz., the minnow, the lazy fish (hohura), and, in some parts of the year, the young of the native trout, which used to be seen in Lake Hawea about a month in the year. There was another little fish in the streams round Oamaru right up to the Lindis Pass but not in the Lindis River, the little bully head. These are all extinct now. The trout would eat up the feed and then eat them, and they were so slow in their movements that the trout would have no difficulty in catchin? them. The eels are no longer in their former fine condition. When the Maori shearers used to 'come up to Wanaka in the late sixties and early seventies they always went eeling on Saturday nights. The first eel would be cooked at once, rolled up in flax, and laid by the fire, and was eaten with much satisfaction.—l am, etc.,

Richard Norman, Lawrence, September 14.