TROUT FISHING

Wairarapa Times-Age, 29 April 1938, Page 2

TROUT FISHING

DETERIORATION IN DOMINION. AN EXPERT’S VIEWS. New Zealand’s trout-fishing, which half a century ago earned her a world-wide reputation as an angler’s paradise, has deteriorated in recent years, according to Mr A. E. Hefford, chief inspector of fisheries and president of the Wellington Philosophical Society, who addressed the society on the Dominion’s fresh-water fisheries. The present-day shortage of big fish was due in part' to the fact that big fish required suitable food, and they followed the inanga and silveries down to the,mouths of the rivers, leaving the'up-country waters to the small fry, said Mr Hefford. Of the natural ■ enemies of trout, eels were undoubtedly a serious one; small trout up to two pounds were to be found in their stomachs. ; The black shag was no good to trout; he admittedly ate eels, where eels were to be found; but where there were black shags bn a trout stream those shags were feeding on trout. They undoubtedly prevented anglers catching more than they did. The common cockabully had been observed to attack newly-hatched trout emerging from the shingle. Another factor in the success of early acclimatisation was that the fry liberated had no big brothers to prey on them; the trout were in this respect one of their own enemies. Today, too, there was more angling —and more poaching, deforestation, water pollution and abstraction, interference with the flow of streams, and irrigation to be considered, he said. All these were, however, results of human agencies, and human activity could put them right. That was the work ahead of fresh-water fisheries conservation in the future. In the past active measures had been limited to the liberation of fry. What was required was further intensive study of the life of trout in New Zealand waters.