Anglers get their fill at safety course

COLIN SMITH/Nelson Mail

SINK OR SWIM: Angler Lester Higgins, front, teaches fellow Nelson Trout Fishing Club members, from left, Ray Deadman, Peter Baker, Fred Frahm, Weldon Lineham, Ian Hoskins, Gebhard Krewitt, Don Clementson, Cam Reid, Dennis Ealam and Mike Standish-White at a wader safety course in the Riverside Pool.

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When fishing there's a lot more that can go wrong than just losing your catch.

Thirteen Nelson Trout Fishing Club members attended an hour-long wader safety course at Riverside Pool yesterday, and club member Terry Kelso said most were surprised at how heavy water-filled waders can be.

Mr Kelso said the waders filled up "like big balloons" and quickly became a dead weight.

"The sooner you can get out of trouble the better.

"Most of the newer waders are breathable which means you can walk up and down the river without getting hot, but they don't have any air bubbles in them like the old wetsuit stuff [neoprene]," he said.

He recalled an incident in Rotorua when a Japanese fly fishing guide was fishing alone in a lake and waded straight off a drop-off, his waders pulling him down.

"They pulled his body out of the lake," he said.

"He only drowned because he didn't know what to do."

Riverside SwimMagic coordinator Fiona Braid said "a lot could go wrong very quickly" if waders filled up with water.

"With a fast-moving river it can be trouble," she said.

"We wanted them to experience how much water those waders can take on, what that feels like and how they can keep themselves safe."

Miss Braid said if anglers found themselves struggling in the water the best thing to do was to float on their back, get their feet up and scull to the side of the river to safety.

She said anglers should let someone know where they were going, when they were due back and carry a whistle to alert companions to trouble.

Mr Kelso also invited whitebaiters to contact the angling club if they wanted to join a wader safety course in the future.

"A lot of whitebaiters use waders down at the mouth of rivers and you can bet your boots none of them have done anything like that."

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fishy   #1   08:14 am Nov 28 2009

awesome stuff. do they run these elsewhere? Do they not wear belts around their middles to prevent waders filling up quickly?

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