Thursday, 8 March 2012

Area Report: Marlborough, Wairau Bar

I've had some luck catching kahawai at the Wairau Bar over the last few weeks, but it sounds like the fishing overall hasn't been as good as it could be/used to be. This is the first time I've fished there, so haven't had anything to compare it to.

Tony Orman reports in the March NZ Fishing News that "the Wairau River mouth has been disappointing for kahawai, with some good days and then others that are virtually blank."

In the letters section of the same edition of the magazine, Lloyd Hanson of Blenheim writes, "The kahawai fishery has gone downhill alarmingly. Oh, there's a few big kahawai in the outer Sounds, but compared to 20 years ago, kahawai shoals in the Sounds, Cloudy Bay and our river mouths are meagre." Mr. Hanson points to mismanagement on the part of the government and their unfair bias towards commercial fishers around our coastline as the main reason for the decline - a lament I've heard before and one I tend to agree with, from what I've read and heard.