A FISHY BUSINESS

New Zealand Listener, Volume 1, Issue 17, 20 October 1939, Page 19

A FISHY BUSINESS

Handy Guide for Non-Anglers

(Written for "The Listener" by

Irideus

7 HEN, in a recent issue of The Listener, we introduced our readers to a brief preliminary examination of the Dominion’s Angling Problem, we mentioned that the angler went angling in the first place to avoid being saddled with a variety of domestic duties whose one common characteristic was an irksome encroachment upon his leisure. It would be manifestly absurd, however, to suggest that angling owes its genesis solely to such domestic escapology: the desire to fish is, if ancillary, no less definite, otherwise the harassed husband and/or father would merely go and play golf, as, indeed, happens in cases of more pronounced mental degeneration. There is, then, we must admit, a pre-disposition to angle. Walton’s phrase, "Angling is somewhat like Poetry; Men are to be Born So," is, like so much of his writing, a palpably specious attempt to spiritualise what is, at best, an atavistic libido. If the angler is not born with a salmonspoon and a flight of treble-hooks in his mouth, he is born with a predisposition to use such tackle, just as other more fortunate people have a congenital weakness for hay-fever or warts. But before one can angle, or make a pretence of angling, there must be something to angle for, and in order that our non-angling readers should be in a position to appreciate what their Waltonian acquaintances are talking about when describing the fish they lost, we take this. opportunity of presenting the first instalment of our Pocket Encyclopeedia of New Zealand Fishes (advt.), the first-fruits of some twenty years of piscatorial disillusionment. The Brown Trout Without reserve, we may say that the trout is the most important fish in New Zealand inland waters and the object of 90 per cent. of fishing expeditions. Trout were first introduced to this country in the ’sixties, about the same time as rabbits, gorse, blackberry, ragwort, and other pests, and on present indications it appears that the majority are likely to live to a ripe old age.

The two principal varieties of trout in New Zealand are the brown and rainbow (q.v.). The former is, so far as the New Zealand stock is concerned, principally of Scottish extraction and is characterised by the inevitable low cunning. With its cousins, the rainbow trout and the salmon, it shares the unique advantage of growth uninterrupted by death, a circumstance of peculiar benefit to anglers, since the majority of trout caught are at the time of landing under the minimum size-limit fixed by acclimatisation societies and the Annual Fishery Regulations. Brown trout, like rainbow, may be further sub-divided into two classes, viz., large trout, which get away, and small trout, which have to be explained away. Habits and diet: The brown trout in New Zealand is to be found in fairly large numbers in rivers, streams, brooks, creeks, burns, springs, dams, lakes, irrigation ditches, zoological and botanical gardens and museum showcases. It feeds voraciously on smaller trout, whitebait, cockabullies, minnows, eels (q.v.), worms, slugs, caterpillers, sponge-cake, ham sandwiches, caramels, chocolates (with or without silver paper), Bath buns, Christmas pudding, and (when available) highgrade imported artificial flies (at 8s 6d a dozen, ex wharf). Nomenclature: The brown trout is known by a variety of local or district names throughout both the North and South Islands, e.g., yellow trout, Monarch of the Brook, golden guinea, Perfect Specimen, Lousy Slab, and many more which it would not be politic to mention here. Methods of capture: Worm-fishing (employed by small boys in comic paper illustrations and by experienced anglers in their saner moments), fly and artificial minnow fishing (not recommended), dynamiting, gaffing or spearing, shooting, netting. The first three methods mentioned are legal.* Sub-species: In the South Island of New Zealand, the brown trout has evolved a definite sub-species, known as estuarine trout, the most notable characteristic of this variety being that it léaves the rivers for the sea prior to the opening of the fishing season and does not return to fresh water until after the season has closed. It may therefore be said to possess in more than normal degree the low cunning referred to above. In other respects it is merely a brown trout that has suffered a sea change. *Worm is, in. some areas, barred as "not sportin’." (To be continued)