Thread: Eugenie Sage wants to Ban Whitebaiting

I fish the Waikato river a lot. 4 years ago we had the best season in living memory, how was that possible in a so called declining fishery?. They did a study a few years ago by catching a whole lot of whitebait at the river mouth which they then dyed a different colour. They then with cooperation from the local baiters found out how much was re-caught as it moved up stream, that ended up being about 10%. I get that this % of the bait that goes up stream which is caught may vary from river to river it still shows that a hell of a lot beats us.
What a lot of you that don't fish ( but are more than happy to buy a fritter off a food truck ) realise is that not only do whitebait run at night (when we are not allowed to fish for it) but it also runs for most of the year. There is this huge assumption that we are fishing for it at the only time it runs which is totally false. I have seen huge runs moving upstream on the opening of Duck shooting and Boxing day!.
Habitat protection and improved water quality will do more to improve runs than anything else. There are already lots of restrictions and rules placed on whitebaiters and these rules are working well.
I cannot remember his name but there is a whitebait expert from Canterbury Uni that has been interviewed a TV in the past, he is a record about all this whitebait going extinct in 10 years blar blar blar is wrong. On the Waikato catches are not declining.