Fishing Reports

 

Gill-netters are reported to be thrashing legendary kingfish possies, Taheke and Hansen’s Reef. If, like me, you take a strong exception to finding commercial fishos in your patch, then read on. Over spring and early summer in the Bay of Islands, I received a number of panic calls reporting huge pilchard boats with huge holds, systematically pillaging the inner Bay. Spring snapper fishing had turned into a bit of a fizzer and summer snapper had been hard to find. There was some logic to the alarm stories: take the baitfish out of the equation and you end up with an empty harbour. I also heard horror stories about trawlers sweeping in close along the west coast. They were reputed to appear every time I wrote a column praising the great fishing out west. Oops! But after a poor summer followed by an average autumn out west, snapper fishing is again hot off the Hokianga. On the east coast, as the season progressed, we witnessed the unusual spectacle of marlin deep inside the Bay, feeding on the large schools of pillys that remained. This incursion of beakies happened several times through the game-fish season. Furthermore, a modest resurgence in both the kingfish and the kahawai fisheries has tended to dampen the clamour of the alarmists. And as I write, we are witnessing the beginning of what promises to be a great winter snapper season on the east coast. So what does this go to prove? It shows that we don’t really know what we’re talking about. When it comes to the state of one fishery or another, so little hard scientific data is available that it’s all guesswork. We need lots more research so we can make informed decisions. And this costs money. And since we so overwhelmingly threw out the soundings licensing option, we’ll have to wait for a few more decades to find a way of rasing the necessary folding stuff. Meanwhile, it’s a bit of a lottery out there. Sometimes we get it right. Sometimes we stuff it up badly. Such is the scientific method of our fisheries management. Back to the gill-netters: experienced commercial fishos reckon the best way to enhance kingfish is to reduce the use of gillnets around reefs known to be kingfish haunts. Doesn’t look good, does it? Only time will tell. So are the commercial fishos to blame? They may be stuffing it for recreational fishos in some situations, but if they’re not breaking any laws, what is there to be said? After all, most commercial fishos are blokes like you and me who love it out there and have found a way to make a living doing something they enjoy. Not a bad predicament eh? If anyone or anything is to be blamed for the gill-netters on Hansen’s, it has to be the absence of any legal definition of recreational fishing rights. And in the absence of anything better, the quota management system is certainly lots better than open slather. Tight lines!

 

From Steven Radich

Report type: Saltwater

Report date: 14 June 01