Bad vibes from NZ

[John Finn]

https://www.stuff.co.nz/business/100076 ... -waterways

[Paul Arden]

Yes it’s a bit sad, John, and seems to be the current state of affairs around most of the world nowadays.

Come to Malaysia! The fish fight much harder and are more challenging to hook

Cheers, Paul

[Jonas Fredriksson]

Has anyone been to NZ recently and experienced this? I would like to make another trip there and this makes me think that I should go soon before it gets ruined completely... Or I should wait and not contribute more to the problem myself...

[Paul Arden]

They were having these discussions 15 years and I read a few articles back then that made me feel less welcome! I think my last trip was ten years ago. I spent close to 20 summers in NZ. Lots of great memories and lots of great times. I didn’t like the foreigner license but that came in after I left. I wouldn’t worry too much about it; there are a small minority of Kiwis who simply don’t like/ are jealous of foreigners. That element of society exists everywhere. The vast majority of Kiwis I met were very fine people.

Cheers, Paul

[Flybye]

I was in South/north Canterbury and the West coast with a bunch of young Norwegians last Nov/Dec had no trouble from anyone, where guides where obviously working with parties we asked how much room they needed and fitted in around them without rancour. It was early season though not many Anglers around. From past experience after Xmas might be different
TK

[Simon Svahn]

Fish on dude, just dont do crazy stuff like fish the same back country beat for a consecutive week, or fish farmland without asking first. People tend to only wanting to fish high/back country for trophies, but there is more to nz than that. A 6 pound trout from a low land creek is a trophie in its enviroment

Om going for a solo trip in january

Cheers
Simon

[Paul Arden]

I was talking with Stu Tripney when he visited me in Malaysia for two months. We talked a fair bit actually, and not only once Apparently I wouldn't recognise NZ any more, and that it's become incredibly busy, particularly with sight-seeing tourists. I think I was very very lucky to have seen and fished NZ when I did.

As I get older I'm less tolerant of other anglers, in fact I've never enjoyed fishing in a crowd! It used to be the case that if you went really hard in NZ you could fish waters that never saw another angler from one season to the next. If I saw footprints, even one or two days old, it would affect my fishing.

I always found it particularly hard to re-manage expectations. For example a really tremendous early season brown trout backcountry day could be 10 fish averaging 5-6lbs. (20 with rainbows but most of them aren't worth catching early season and the average would be around 3-4lbs). As the season moved into Summer, it would be difficult to find water to have all to yourself and a good backcountry day may only be three fish. However in the later years that I fished there, more and more anglers were fishing the early season and just getting a decent amount of water became challenging.

When I think back, when I first fished NZ the Oreti was not fished. A few people must have known about it. I fished it with Camo-Guy a few times in the early '90s but we never had a red letter day and I was more interested in the remote stuff. Then when I did discover it a few years later, we would fish through the section that is now three beats, sticking a car at the top and one at the bottom. Now that's impossible unless you have three cars

The Greenstone is a lottery, or permits or something - I used to fish the Caples, drop down the Greenstone and over the top down the Mararoa into Mavora Lakes. I'd run into the odd angler, but I wouldn't even think about that trip today.

So I can understand the frustration. Me, I just stopped going and moved to the jungle, but it's harder if you live there!

Cheers, Paul