Alas, poor rivers, we knew them

BY ZANE MIRFIN

Degradation of Nelson's fishing rivers is blamed on environmental vandalism by the Nelson and Tasman councils.

Once upon a fishery, there were the Maitai, Happy Valley (Wakapuaka) and Wai-iti rivers.

These were small, friendly, local streams near population centres and were highly valued by junior anglers. Such streams were angling incubators that provided safe and productive fishing opportunities for generations of Nelson anglers dating back to the late 19th century.

Alas, progress and time have wrought massive change on such fisheries and the result hasn't always been pretty.

Just this week, I took a walk down memory lane with a friend up the Wai-iti River between Brightwater and Wakefield. I hadn't fished the Wai-iti for close to 25 years, we had a few hours to burn, and the river was close to home. What a disappointment – all I can say is that I won't be going back. The river was an eyesore, bulldozed, abused, with the willow trees shredded and fallen by machinery.

Martin and I walked for miles and only saw one small lonely trout in a mucked up and silted river. After a few hours, it was obvious that a cup of tea at Mirf's house was going to be a lot more fun.

Don't blame agriculture, forestry, irrigation, or hydroelectric companies here, because the blame on our close-to-home fisheries can be directly attributed to the local Tasman district and Nelson city councils.

How such organisations can insist other people follow their rules and regulations when they are probably some of the worst environmental vandals around has always baffled me.

What seems worse about this situation is that we are paying them to do this through our annual rates. If the local councils can't protect what is on our doorstep, you'd really have to wonder about the future. As the Tasman District Council proudly proclaims from billboards around the region – It's the lifestyle that counts!

As a boy, my first love was the Maitai River, flowing through the heart of Nelson city. My mother Sherry used to drop boyhood fishing mates and myself off at the river on the way to work and pick us up later in the day during those idyllic summer holidays long ago.

We used to have a great time fishing the Maitai, catching prodigious numbers of small to medium-sized brown trout in the angling equivalent of a fish hatchery. The Maitai was a great historic fishing river and one of the first streams open to licensed trout fishing in New Zealand, but alas it imploded virtually overnight as a fishery before anyone really realised what we had lost.

The Nelson City Council's Maitai Dam was an ecological disaster for the river, as the river water quality deteriorated markedly for a variety of reasons, and the insect and fish life just disappeared. I wouldn't even let my kids swim in the river these days and a quick fish with some friends this October drew a blank. So much for cherished boyhood memories.

Having a coffee with a mate down at Sundial Square in Richmond recently, we were talking fishing and he was saying that he just hadn't been having much luck trout fishing the past few seasons. He commented that he wasn't taking his boy out as much as he should be because the lack of fishing action was putting his boy off fishing.

While he enjoyed a day out regardless of the result to escape the pressures of life and the ringing phone, his boy needed some bent-rod action and being continually unsuccessful was conditioning his son against trout fishing. As we talked, looking at the fountains, the thought did cross my mind that it'd be a sad day if the only water feature our young people got to experience was Sundial Square.

Others tell me the same thing. I know of several experienced local anglers who have been out half a dozen times this season for no result. It's a manly thing, but they talk of losing their confidence and their mojo. Some even talk of exiting the sport because it has become just too hard and the fun-ometer has broken. Some local retailers quietly acknowledge a general lack of interest in trout fishing and their shelves stocked with saltwater gear point to where all the anglers are heading, especially as the local snapper fishery is going from strength to strength with good management after virtual annihilation by the commercial sector in the 1970s.

The Nelson Trout Fishing Club is not immune from anglers voting with their feet. I love going to club meetings and really enjoy the social banter and camaraderie of club members, but it is really tough for the club to recruit any junior members. At 42 years old, I'm probably one of the youngest and it's probably fair to say that most club members struggle to catch trout on a consistent basis. In my master of arts thesis in 1990, on trout fishing in Nelson and its management for recreation, many anglers I surveyed by questionnaire claimed that the fishery was buggered then, so these sentiments are hardly new.

While I write this, I'm looking at my Fish & Game voting papers to elect new councillors for the next three years. I wish the new councillors well but I'm not sure that the current national Fish & Game model is the best system to deliver results for licence holders and the youth of New Zealand, albeit in difficult times and conditions.

Fish & Game needs to find ways to encourage young anglers and create quality fishing locations close to civilisation.

Recently I was invited to Henley Primary School to talk to rooms 15 and 21 about my outdoors column. The kids had also been learning about sustainability of the world's oceans and I wondered how many of them would experience quality fishing in the years ahead.

It's difficult not to be a little dark sometimes, but I figure that my family and fishing customers will probably be OK because I've spent a lifetime developing connections and learning how to extract results from a shrinking resource, but I do feel for those young men and women who follow in our fishing footsteps.

It's easy to blame the local councils for the demise of local trout fisheries that served as a valuable training ground and nursery for our younger anglers. But time moves on, fashions change, and new facilities arrive. Talking to plenty of dads at Saxton Field's new athletics track the other night, many of whom I went to high school and university with, I heard high praise for the quality of the modern new sporting facilities built by the city council and TDC.

Maybe the youth of Richmond and Nelson are in good shape with alternative outdoor activities as time moves on and the Maitai and Wai-iti rivers become drainage ditches. As in life, when one door closes, another will usually open.

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