Thread: Whitebaiting

Originally Posted by Gamehunter

I used to whitebait off Devonport wharf as a teenager. Do guys still whitebait off there?

Funny enough I have a story about that. My Grandfather was Robert Shanks who back in the day worked for the Auckland harbourboard and was in charge of all the passenger ships that came into Auckland. The story as related to me from him was that trouble was breaking out among the whitebaiters on the wharf for the best spots with fights a regular thing which the Harbourboard was getting sick of. A meeting was held to decide what to do about it.
Easy someone said, they are fishing out of season, we will just stop it on those grounds. Great! job done, then some cleaver cookie suggested that perhaps they had better check that it actually was whitebait.
So anyway off they went and confiscated some of the catch off a few wharf fishermen, Yip looks like whitebait, tastes like whitebait but we had better send some off to NIWA or whoever it was in those days to check. Nope not whitebait but smelt or the young of KY, Trevally etc. Hmmm what to do.

So the story goes it was stopped on the grounds that they were catching undersized fish with undersized nets.

Never thought I would be repeating that story told to me over thirty years ago.