TAUPO-NUI-A-TIA

Taupo Times, Volume I, Issue 16, 30 April 1952, Page 6

TAUPO-NUI-A-TIA

TALES OF THE TAUPO COUNTRY (By R.H.W.) Throughout tljie Taupo Country today talk of fish or fishing1 almost invariably refers to trout, but there were fish to be caught in the watei^s of Taupo-nui-a-tia long before the eoming of the pakeha. Just as the forests were far richer in bird life than they are today, so waters were more abundantly supplied with small fish, the numbers of which have in modern times been depleted by the trout. The most valued fresh water fish of olden days was the eel, whieh more than almost any other food provided fat, so universally craved by man. But in the waters of Taupo the eel was unknown, though there are stories of large eels formerly caught in Lake Roto-a-Ira, and an eel was reported as having been seen in the Tokaanu Stream some forty years ago. But despite the absence of the eel, there were valuable fish in the lake and streams. The largest was the kokopu, and others were the inanga and koaro.

The kokopu was taken in various ways, but the most important method as the use in deep water of a kind of basket net made of fine mesh on a circular hoop of wood, the net being known a pouraka. In the pouraka some koura (crayfish) was fastened as bait, and a three-ply plaited flax line some hundred or two hundred feet in iength was used to lower the net into deep water, two sinkers of stone being fastened inside it. A wooden »pool about two feet long was made hold the line, the middle part of he wood at each end being cut away, leaving two horns so that the line could be wound round the central portion between the projections. Marks on the shore indicated fishing places, and the. pouraka were lowered from canoes, usually in the evening, and the line fastened round one of the horns of the wooden spool, or poito, which then floated upright in the water as a buoy. In the morning the pouraka would be visited and hauled up and if full of kokopu the fisherman would know as soon as it came into sight by the agitation of the water within it. The bottom of the net was untied, the kokopu emptied into the canoe and the net rebaited and set. If nothing had been taken, it was set in another place. The time for his type of fishing was from November to March and the kokopu caught were about the length of a man's hand and were very fat. A tale handed down for many years describes the discovery of a place once famous for its kokopu. About three hundred and fifty years ago at a place ealled Tu-tete, on the eastern shore of the lake, north of the Hine-maiai Stream, there lived a man named Kopeke, who noted early one summer that the shags were flying out on the Lake to get fish for their young. Though they went further out than any shallow known to him, Kopeke reasoned that there must be aplace not too deep for shags to fish. Aceordingly, with some of his men, he went out one cairn day to investigate and eventually found a shallow place which was ealled Popoia-nga-oheohe. It is also known as the "The Roof of the House of Horo-matangi." A net was let down and a large haul of kokopu secured, and from that day down fo modern times the right to fish that place belonged to Kopeke and his detseendents and was confirmed by a proverb, "The fish in cairn water are for everybody, the fish in the current rare for Kopeke.' The spot is known today as the Horomatangi Reef, and it is one of the haunts of the wellknown Taniwha of that name. Kokopu were also taken by means

of a tau, a bundle of fern lowered into the water by means of a flax rope. A long rope was run out into the Lake, attached to a stake on the shore and with a stone anchor at he other end. At rightangles to this rope lighter ropes were attached, and the weighted fern bundles were fixed to the ends of these ropes, while a poito (fioat) was placed at the junction of the first short line with the main j rope. The bundles were lifted in day- | light, one at a time, with great care, land were shaken either into the conoe, or into a net ealled karapa held under the bundle to catch the kokopu as they dropped from the fern. This method of fishing was used from April to the end of September. The koura (crayfish) were also taken in the same way. For taking the inanga, a net known as kupenga was used similarly to the pakeha drag net. These nets were from fifty to a hundred yards in iength and from six to eight feet deep, made of very fine flax strips in a small mesh, and were hauled by two ropes from two to four hundred yards long, one at either end of the net. A story J of about three hundred years ago r'e1 fers to this kind of fishing. Uru tairaia was drawing a net of inanga, and as it came near the shore he jumped into the water to press the bottom line of the net down, peering into the water just as Tutetawa threw some stones to frighten the fish back into the net. A stone fell close to Uru-Taraia's face and splashed him, so that he uttered a curse, which led to bloodshed a little later. It is to be hoped that such fisherman's profanity is now as obsolete as the kupenga.