Thread: Salmon

Originally Posted by sore head stoat

What is the answer ?

Ban fishing above the sh1 bridges on all the braided rivers. The Waimakariri for example once they get to sh1 there are free to go up and spawn. they have got through the mouth, made their way past mackintoshes dunns bank and the banana hole they should be free to go from there.
I also think that most of the salmon caught are caught by people that know what they are doing above the bridges. You might get 200 people fishing below the bridge that might catch 10 fish between them a day. But you could get 50 people above the bridge in a good hole taking a fish each(if not 2 a day for the dishonest ones)
I also believe the increased number of kahwai has something to do with it as well (this bit might get a bit long winded)
So I think 30 years ago they used to trawl the river mouth and must have caught a lot of kahwai so when I was a kid guys caught a lot of salmon but hardly caught any kahwai. Then I think the trawlers got banded and now there’s heaps of kahwai and not many salmon. There are a lot of videos of guys catching kahwai at the kaiapoi mouth cutting them open to find 2,3,4 salmon smelt in them, hatchery releases 30,000 smelt doesn’t take 5,000 kahwai long to deplete that number (this never seemed to be a problem 30 years ago)
Rather than returning fish maybe they need to somehow figure out how many make it out to sea in the first place
Last the size of fish return is depressing for anyone that’s fished for ten years even more depressing for those that have fished for 30 years. 10lb fish are the norm in the Waimakariri now with a good fish being 15 and anything bigger is almost a modern day trophy. Fish used to regularly get over 20lb (if you caught a 10lb fish in the 90’s nobody even cared) because there had been 20 25lb fish caught already.
One of the only things I can think of for this is the amount of krill being caught and turned into high protein fish food for farmed fish. That’s my 2 cents on the situation
Being a salmon fisherman you spend a lot of time on the riverbank chasing these river unicorns, gives you a bit of time to ponder things.

Originally Posted by Mr300WSM

Ban fishing above the sh1 bridges on all the braided rivers.

I have heard this argument before and its always from guys that fish at the mouths of the rivers..

From memory 75% of the salmon caught in the Rangitata were caught below the marker posts .. would it make more sense to ban fishing at the mouth instead ?