By Fred Medland  (Born 1926)

As with all fishing stories  short and long yarns they all have a start.  Some start in the slack times between bites, in the pub next day after the physical work is done, but the best are told when you arrive home late and your breath smells of Captain Morgans throat lubricant.  You find your tea is cold, its dark and it has rained in the last half hour you were out and now you have a bin or in our case a sack of assorted fish to clean.  They could be snapper, odd cod, Kawahai, yes a gurnard and if we were lucky a monstrous Hapuka. (If you were boat fishing)  You even managed to lift the cray pot and were rewarded with 10 to a dozen crays.  No escape slots in those days to let the yellow eels and octopus in and out until they had devoured your crayfish.  Mind you in our days pots were lifted each morning (except Sunday) and re baited again in the evening if it wasn’t a full moon.  Our Cray pots were made from supple jack vines so had a limited life if lost during a storm; a block of wood was used as a float (no name required). This all happened in the late 1930s to 1950.

One of my first fishing trips, not the odd one off the beach evening fishing, it was a days effort and a, well-prepared days outing. Tanekaha rods, cotton fishing lines.  Our sinkers were odd bolts and nuts even a spark plug and if we were keen old lead heads off roof nails.  The hooks we used were made by a firm using the name “Alcocks” (much to the satisfaction of a local resident, E Alcock of Tryphena).  On this fishing trip we had lunch of home made bread, a billy (a small one) to brew tea if we had time, an old “Enos” fruit drink bottle of milk.  We made sure to carry matches as a back up to make a fire if anyone was hurt.

Our prime number one bait was eel caught the night before.  It was filleted and toasted over a hand full of scrub to bring out the oil and toughen it up.  Two cattle dogs went with us, maybe if a wild pig was found we could try out our home made knives held onto our belt using some of Dads home tanned leather for a sheath.  The dogs were “Blackie” and “Bingo” and in later years “Wave” and “Atom”.

This first trip happened around about 1936 or 1938 when I was 10/11 years old.  We walked through Mitcheners Farm (after making a phone call to them to seek permission).  That was before Mitcheners Road was formed, up past the head of the river and the fossils climbing over the Big Ridge hill to the east but south of an area known as “the crater” where Osbornes had a number of bee hives (another story), to a big high rock with a hole through it, this was where we would fish.  In our fishing group was my father John who had a beautiful Tanakaha rod that he had made and shaped himself, Trevor my brother and I who had only hand lines.  Lionel my younger brother would have had a  line on a small  bamboo rod.  The large variety of bamboo had not been brought to the Medlands Bay at that time.  Sugar bags were used as a knap sack or Maori pikau they did a good job of carrying a load, your hands were free and the weight placed to your comfort on your back.

We timed our arrival at the fishing rocks for low tide, as we wanted to collect at least two sugar bags of kina and the area wasn’t a good kina rock, too many snapper about.  These were used as berley or ground feed.  Dad had chosen the day well, no wind, tide was low enough and next to no swell.  It makes all the difference on an open coast, very exposed and South America out of sight over the horizon.  The day suited our hand lines and Dads reeless rod.  He used about 5 metres of line and one hook.  As the bottom was very rough sinkers didn’t last long.  A stone tied on with flax made a good substitute.  As we broke up kina and threw them in so the fish activity increased.  Hundreds of bright sky blue Mao Mao to the smaller dull blue ones darted in and out of the sea egg berley.  They in their feeding activity signalled to other fish that there was feed about.  The first fish we caught was the active brown kelp fish not an eating type of fish, catch about 12 or 15 and you had cleared the area of them.  By this time Kahawai showed up if we could catch 3 or 4 we were set with a good range of bait for the day. 

About lunch time the billy had boiled and as you took your first bite of a nice corned beef sandwich the first good snapper would take your bait.  These fish had well worn teeth and a very dark skin indicating that they were rock or kelp feeders.  It was a hard job to eat our sandwiches at times.  The fish were now arriving, we were using a big slab of Kawahai or eel on a single hook on about 6 metres of line no sinker.  Our lines were cotton you had a colour choice white, brown or green it was the most common.  There was always fish about you just waited, kept throwing in crushed sea eggs until sooner or later another big snapper would arrive.  Some time the big fish would take some of our small baits causing panic and the loss of a hook as most straightened out and were useless.  The fish would be back in a few minutes and we would be ready, a sharp hook and the snapper joined the others we had caught!  After catching a number of fish they would be filleted, as we would not carry bone home because of the weight.  I have seen as many as 6 – 8 snapper average weight being about 8 1bs each caught in about 2 hours.  I recall one fishing trip to this fishing area some years later perhaps 1944/1945 catching a monstrous fish a king fish, short of bait we had used “Jelly” to kill sprats, taking a bucket full and using one whole sprat, hoping for a big snapper using cotton line again.  I with the help of a gust of wind managed to throw out to about 30 metres.  The water erupted as kingfish fought to take the sprat, I had never seen kingfish like this before.  One Kingi took the bait and dived deep the line winding stick doing a dance on the rocks.  The line still went out I could not hold it; it spooled out with me holding the winding stick using all of the line.  I held on and walked along the rocks trying to ease the pressure on the line hoping the hook and my cotton line would hold.  Other Kingfish were milling around no doubt wondering what the hooked fish was doing.  After about 20 minutes the Kingfish gave up, I managed to work it in to a gut in the rocks using an incoming wave and surfed it up where it was left high and dry.  I grabbed it before the next wave and it was all I could do to hold and carry a kicking 351bs (16 kilo) Kingfish up the barnacle-covered rocks (no shoes in those days just bare feet).  Looking into the deep sea I could see big Kingfish still swimming around, I could have caught more but now we couldn’t carry any more home.  I removed the gut and the head along with the gills to reduce carry home weight.  This fish and all fish that we had caught were washed in seawater and covered to keep blowflies off it and left to drain.

The trip home took over two hours with plenty of stops, the mug of tea we had before we left helped.  Most of the Kingfish was smoked, using Ti tree in the smoke house, the other fish was used too, and none was wasted.  We fried it or it was eaten as fish cakes.  This was one of our favourite ways of eating fish.  We had no freezers in those days.  I wish that on some of these fishing trips I could have had a camera with us.  As it was wartime camera film wasn’t in the shops to buy.

I recall about 1946/47 two trawlers were trawling off the North to South East coast of Great Barrier Island.  I understand two brothers skippered these vessels, The Margaret and The Dorothy.  I never heard the surnames of the skippers. These boats had their rest times anchored in Medlands Bay.  If we were going out fishing in our clinker built boats, we would call on them with some home made butter, plus at times milk and eggs.  In return they offered us fish of course, but we enjoyed fishing what we really liked was a couple of coils of worn winch rope.  One day the boats suggested we have a day on board while they trawled.  We did accept and two of us anchored our boats (two boats).  I went on the “Margaret” with my brother Trevor. My cousins Ivan and Samuel went on the other boat. We travelled out to sea for about 5 miles, we were read all the safety rules, no stepping over a moving rope, go around, no hands in your pockets you can play billiards at home!  Running out the net was done by fastening a rope on a marker buoy and anchor steam down, one leg of a triangle, across the base, the net with its Para vane boards to spread the net (otter boards) was played out and making a turn back to the marker buoy and anchor, running out rope all the way.  I would guess about 1 mile of rope on each leg.  The net would be about 3 metres deep and the center or belly was made of much heaver cord.  A hole tied with an easy release knot to dump the catch over the hold.  The time trawling was dependant on weather, sea, wind and how much fish was expected.  A good operator would jump on the towing rope to try and guess the size of the catch.  Two main engine driven winches one on each side of the wheel house hauled the net in and two home made rope coilers took care of the rope after it was wound in 15-20 coils on each side up to 1.5 metres high.  With no rough sea I saw one coil with each turn placed exactly on the turn underneath up to 2 metres high.  Paying the net out to completed trawl would take about 3 to 5 hours depending on the sea conditions and catch size.  The net would surface some distance behind the boat, where the catch weight would be guessed; can we lift it all at once or divide the catch?  The catch was about a tonne so was handled in one lift, positioned over the hold and the holding end trip knot tripped, releasing a cascade of fish all sorts, snapper mainly but also the odd Stingray and small sharks, into the ships hold.

There were 3 men working the boat, skipper, engineer and deck hand as the fish were sorted and stacked in layers and covered with ice.  Any fish or object that was unusual or had some interesting colour or shape was put aside and later put in big glass jars with a liquid in them.  I guess to preserve the items.  Later they were taken to the Auckland Museum for study by a crewmember who had a relation working there.  Some years later a large number of fishing trawlers which had been fishing in the Bay of Plenty area found they could catch fish off outside or “at the back of the Barrier” saving a large amount of time travelling.  The boats trawled the area hard and anchored at Medlands or Kaitoki beaches.  I recall 12-15 fishing boats anchored at the one time, some times the weather forced them to the western side of the Barrier, there they fished or trawled the gulf.  A number of these boats left their anchors in Medlands Bay, which were found later by shellfish and crayfish divers.  Some seabed is very foul in Medlands Bay.  These trawlers must have taken hundreds of tons of fish from the Barrier and Gulf areas.  If they missed the fish off the Barrier they were waiting for them in the fine breeding grounds of the Gulf.  Fishing continued even when the catches were low, these fishing and breeding grounds were over fished.  On the Barrier we saw the effects of over fishing, no snapper on the beaches, paddle crabs by the hundreds who now in turn ate the shellfish, there are no Tuatua now because of this, but hundreds of sea eggs as no snapper to eat them, they are eating the sea weed.

During the 1930/1940 years we saw some heavy storms come down from Norfolk Island area and the worst storms from the Kermadec Islands, tons of seaweed would wash ashore, torn from the rocks by 6 metre waves, thrown up on the beach in a high wall 2 to 3 metres high about 1 hectare in area.  After about a week the seaweed fly would have laid their eggs in the decomposing seaweed, they in turn hatched into small but active maggots, which 90% found their way into the sea at high tide.  Piper, sprats and Kawahai were there in their millions, so were bigger fish, school Kahawai, Kingfish and lovely John Dory.  We would stand on the seaweed and catch big snapper waiting until other fish or small ones got out of the way.  In later years when .22 rifle cartridges could be bought I have shot big snapper through the small of their tail, waded in and picked them up after doing a “down trow”, a small charge of “jelly” or gelignite wall nut size would give us enough bait for a days fishing and big piper to eat.  It wasn’t unusual to get a big Kahawai, but they were hard to get, as they are very easily frightened.

I recall night fishing off the Kaitoki beach after dark; we wanted big fish to smoke.  They arrived after dark, we didn’t mind fishing at night using a kerosene lantern in the bottom of the boat.  We found a lot of sharks at the northern end of Kaitoki.  Any we caught using a large hook 100 yards of sash cord were kept, their livers contained saleable oil used in paint, and we didn’t let many go.  Next day the shark liver was cut into strips and laid out on a black-tared sheet of corrugated iron.  The hot sun melted the oil out, after a week, the smell was as high as Mt Hobson and you had to keep the rain off it too as that down graded the oil quality.  The left overs were pig feed or garden fertilizer.  The “Cresent’ Paint Company paint manufactures paid about 2 shillings and 6 pence a gallon (4.5 litres) (30 cents).

One night three of us were drift fishing off the Kaitoki beach the night was very dark, we had heard diesel engines noises for some time, it wasn’t until we woke up that a trawler was running out a trawl net, that came in between us and the beach about 300 metres in shore, lucky for us we had not put out our “stone in a bag anchor”  we managed to pull our lines in and heard the net towing rope cutting through the water we were very lucky as no one was showing any navigation or riding lights.

 Around 1944/45 my father John and Mum Nellie took us all to visit Walter and Jean Blackwell at the Sugar Loaf  ( Mums sister Jean).  Later that afternoon on the way home we saw on Medlands Beach a big Snapper in company with some smaller fish eating Tua tua in the incoming tide in about 160mm of water.  Just their tails were visible and they were 3 metres off shore.  My father had my sister Lois in a carry bag made of canvas on his favourite Tanekaha rod.  He quickly dumped Lois in the sand and harpooned the big snapper through the mouth.  Away went the 121b fish out to sea but the drag on the big end of the rod bought the fish into shallow water, Dad waded in and caught it.  Uncle Jim didn’t want any fish as it had been caught on Sunday not the correct day to catch fish.  We, Uncle Sam and Aunt Muriel who were with us enjoyed fish for Sunday tea.

Further to the shark fishing, Blackwell’s and Todd’s used to catch sharks off Mulberry Grove beach. They used a harpoon 50-60 metres of window sash cord and an old 12-gallon oil drum.  Harpoon the shark, throw the drum overboard then wait until the shark drowned itself.  I know one year late 1930s they made good money extracting oil from sharks.  I think some stingray liver was also used.  Some of the bigger sharks teeth were removed and sold to the jewellery manufacturers.  I understand there was a good demand for good-sized teeth (may have been overseas).

 During their migratory life Porpoise, Dolphin and Whales were often seen off shore and all around the Barrier.  On One occasion when I was up on Goat Hill everywhere on the sea I looked there were hundreds, perhaps thousands of Dolphins moving north.  I would have only seen 50% as they swam under the water, I would have seen the ones coming up to breathe.  Another sight I’ll never forget is the little pink-footed seagulls.  They were here in there millions on the local wharves, where they would roost at night; their white droppings covered the timber woodwork until it was completely “painted”.  In the hot sun the smell was overpowering, when it rained it was very slippery and dangerous to walk on.  I have seen these birds on Medland’s Beach 200-300 metres long and 50-60 metres deep.  They were resting after a good feed out at sea; they would feed on small fish like white bait.

 During 1950’s to the mid 1970’s fishing from a boat could be very exciting around the Great Barrier Island.

 I recall a short trip with the late George Mason (in the 1950’s ?).  We had caught 5-6 big school Kahawai around the reef in Medlands Bay.  We then moved down the coast behind the Goat hill 50 metres off the rocks.  There we scaled and gutted the Kahawai into the sea.  The blood and guts did the berley job in a few minutes the big snapper arrived.  We caught about 10-12 real big fish all to finish up in the smoke house.   A number of cod and Parrotfish completed the catch for the evening.  The Cray pot was baited and we were home on dark.  All of these fish were dark in colour showing they lived and fed amounst seaweed.  None of the fish was wasted.  Fifty years later I reminded George about the fishing trips and I could see his fingers moving as he remembered these fish and the way they could bit and pull.

Every tidal fresh water stream on the eastern side of Great Barrier had a number of mullet in it and they were fair game for us if we were short of bait, also smoked mullet were very nice but were inclined to be very oily so were smoked flesh side down.  The little sandy beach on the southern end of Medlands Bay was for a number of years known as Stingray Bay (also known as Reids Bay) due to the large number of rays there. They made good pig feed and cray bait.  I have caught three or four by standing in the shallow water with a big rock on my shoulder waiting until a stingray would come close enough, drop the rock on it killing it, or in its fright and panic go up on the beach.  Cooked for pig feed and the hens loved them too, the egg flavour showed when the hens had had too much.

Medlands Beach always had good shellfish.  Plenty of mussels on Memory Park Rock, two big patches of Tua Tua at each end of the beach also paua and sea eggs on the rocks.  While crayfish could be lifted out of a gut in the rock near where Medlands boat shed was located with this amount of shellfish it attracted fish to come into feed.  It was no trouble to catch fish at any tide. Off the beach at high tide or off the rocks.  I recall Mother asking me one evening as she gave me two mutton belly flap squares “here take these down and catch a fish for breakfast” I did.  Those two baits caught 6 good snapper off the beach and I still had two well-chewed pieces of bait left.

Fishing was the same on the western side of the Barrier, we found bait was harder to get and at times we had to shoot a shag to use as bait.  It was very good.  I remember during the time I was employed to do main line maintance for the Post and Telegraph Department Cyril Eyre and I would shoot a shag under the shag roost in schooner Bay using floating lines to catch some of the biggest snapper I have ever seen.  The Shags coming back home to roost overfull of fish couldn’t make a landing on the high branches so they would drop a fish in their beaks or regurgitate half digested fish, the snapper waited for this to happen every evening.  We caught about 5/6 big fish all we wanted, some were smoked.  Cyril Eyre used Pohutukawa for firewood and made a first class job.  Any left over shag bait was used in the cray fish pot as bait the next day.

When Medland Bros and Cyril Eyre were building the Tryphena wharf in about 1936 I can remember catching a big snapper off the end of the partly constructed wharf, the snapper was big full of roe and going into the Hauraki Gulf to spawn.

About the time the wharf was completed in about 1939 there was good fishing off the wharf and its steps; we caught many sprats and piper while waiting for the weekly boat.  During the war some maintenance was carried out on the fender piles, one boat day some one had seen and harpooned a monster stingray, real big, well over 2 metres across.  The harpoon line had tangled around the wharf piles, the Stingray lay on the bottom 2.5 metres deep, we couldn’t see the harpoon it may have pulled out killing the ray.  Later a real big blue shark came in trying to get the liver (they love it).  This shark would be 3 metres long.  Edwin Alcock who was in the NZ army fired a shot at the shark using his army rifle .303.  The shark came back later with a mark on its back, but next morning the shark had gone, so had the stingray, just the harpoon left tangled around an old anchor.  We didn’t swim off the wharf for years after that!

Some of the unusual happenings associated with catching fish that are impossible today.  For example a number of us boys had been fishing off Medlands Beach towards The Sugar Loaf end on the way home (after dark) we checked our cousins set eel lines under the bridge on Masons Road.  We found no eels hooked so to have some fun hooked two small snapper onto the eel line and put them back into the drain.  Our cousins told us (some days later) that there must have been a very high tide as they were lucky in catching snapper off the bridge, we never said a word but with Mum and Dad we had many a laugh about it.  Also ask David Medland (my brother) or Charlie Blackwell (my cousin) about the multiplying Hapuka, these two cousins had been out fishing and were clever enough to catch a Hapuka about 301bs (12-13kgs).  On landing at the old boat shed slipway they knew they would be watched when they landed their catch, one boy said to the other lets slide the fish under the boat and back up again 3 or 4 times, each time the fish passed under the boat it was held up in plain view enabling our Uncle Sam Medland to see and count the fish he saw.  The boys knew too Uncle Sam had Grandfathers old telescope quite capable of seeing and knowing what the fish was they were unloading.  The boys returned home very happy in their day fishing and a good Hapuka catch.  Two maybe three days went by, a chance meeting with Uncle Sam they were asked “my word boy, you did catch some Hapuka the other day, but what on earth did you do with them all asked Uncle Sam? We didn’t see any!  With a big grin the reply to Uncle Sam was we ate most of it, but did give a small amount away.  Have you ever seen a cat after stealing butter or cream grin? that was the grins that David and Charlie had on their faces.

Cray Fishing outside Medlands old boat shed on the western side of the rock. There is a gut, quite deep with a under water hole on the sea end.  This gut used to house a number of crayfish.  Baiting them up with a leg of old mutton, waiting two or three days a net was baited and lowered into the hole area using a  pole 4 metres long.  This pole pivoted on a post set into the rock (post hole still in the rock today)A 45 minute wait the net was lifted, all I could do as it was heavy, the net would be a metre in diameter and could hold 12 to 15 Cray fish.  Not all big ones but certainly more than half were.  I have filled a wheat sack and had to get the old horse to get them home next morning.  Uncle Joe or Sam would wait until we had baited the crays and then take out a bag full. The next night we would have our turn and still catch a load to take home.  There must have been hundreds of crayfish about, at times we would catch a pack horse type  those ones were always thrown back, including the small ones of the usual variety.

More Fishing Stories

By Fred Medland

In the mid 1970’s while we were still living at Kumeu Noeline and I with our daughters, Lynda, Joanne and Leonie returned to Great Barrier Island for regular holidays.

Noeline and myself had been given sections in the John Medland school paddock, which was part of my father’s farm.  My father (John Medland) had foreseen the day when the land would have to be sold.  Produce prices were going down, freight costs going up with no incentive by the government to aid farmers in remote areas. He surveyed off a number of sections and left Mother, the boys and one-daughter sections of their choice.  Noeline and I sold one of ours for $800 and then decided to build a cottage down “The Lane” in Medlands Bay.

We started building in 1974.  It was around this time and while building that we had some unforgettable fishing excursions during the school holidays.  Fishing around the rocks and down behind Goat Hill.  We had better fishing gear.  I had a beautiful Mitchell reel given to me by Noeline and the girls, it was my birthday present one year.  Using eel as bait we had some good fishing off the beach and the most interesting trips around the rocks.  These trips were made when our girls came down during the school holidays.  (Noeline was working at the Kumeu telephone exchange at the time).  We would spend most of the day crawling over rock and under some, the sea life was very interesting.  We did see the odd crayfish, caught some of them too, using a section of net, bait in the middle, dropped in the right place, we waited until the cray started to eat or remove the bait, then lifted the net.  The cray became tangled and it was ours.  In most of the holes in the rocks that had been covered by the tide we would look for paua, but found more down in crevices  At times we could see them but out of our reach.  The sea eggs that were down some of these holes were at least 110mm across, we used them for berley.  They did a very good job.  Some of our fishing spots behind Goat Hill were fishable at low tide only and in one place the water was very deep, there have been some very nice fish caught here including the odd kingfish that had ventured into this deep-water area.  I have never landed a Hapuka off the rocks, but once had a small one on my line at the reef, but lost it at the rocks in front of me, so I knew what it was I had had on my line.

Amongst the rock formation (mostly sedimentary) that makes up a lot of the cliff faces they contain a lot of fossils, in some layers rushes, cutty grass and ferns can be sorted through.  Some timber has been carbonised by heat and is quite black, in one place (visible at ½ tide only) a complete tree stump with roots, the stump is about 2 metres across and 1 ½ metres high, and it has a hole down its centre.  The root pattern is over an area about 10 metres and sits out on its own on a fairly flat rock.  A lot of these fossils are partly petrified.  This rock formation is about 12 million years old (see “NZ a Drift”, by Dr Stevens).

I remember one trip up the “Big Ridge” past the “Goat Hill” to the hole in the rock fishing area; while Lynda and Joanne fished Leonie and I tried to find a way down onto the rocks further south.  We started down from above a goat cave high on the cliff face, angling down, there was no track.  A lot of loose rock among big old pohutakawa trees with their massive root systems, that held the trees to a rock face (some of these trees I have never seen with flowers).  When we did get down to the sea we found a water filled cave stopped us from going south and a sheer rock bluff stopped us from joining Lynda and Joanne to the Northerly direction.  A short bolder beach was between us.  If we could have got around we would have found a sulphur deposit from a hot water spring (which I did find years later collecting fishing net floats, I reported the find). Also I found a white painted highway road marketer with its reflector paint on the top.  I wedged it in a crevice up the cliff face but it got washed away in the Bola Storm some years later.  Leonie and myself had to back track up through trees and rocks to get to Lynda and Joanne where they had caught some good fish.  We had lunch caught some more fish collected a number of paua, had a look on a bolder beach then headed home.  We climbed a nice clean grass covered hill on the south side of the crater, on the way up Lynda found a native orchid plant in the grass that she wanted, so she set to using Joannes fishing knife with its yellow handle and stainless blade to dig into the soil, the blade broke off leaving the yellow handle in Lynda’s hand!  Joanne had found this knife on the rocks near the boat shed; she wasn’t a happy girl on the way home.  We all had paua for tea that night.

On the 5^th January 1977 David and I went in his boat up to Whakatautuna Point fishing.  The day was good, warm and the sea a good colour, blue.  A good day for deep water fishing.  We had a good catch, plenty of small snapper and every now and then a good-sized fish.  We did catch two blue cod and a number of golden snapper with their big eyes and large mouths, the golden snapper tangling up our lines.  One of the last fish I caught was a Hapuka about 151bs, a very nice fish making the trip worthwhile.  These times if you wanted to get good fish you had to go out into deep water, off the beach you mainly got Kahawai and some times a small snapper.  A very large number of paddle crabs were in the sand and large numbers over Tua Tua beds, they could eat your bait in about 10 minutes.

From these times fishing has deteriorated, long liner boats are still working off shore using lines over 5km long with hundreds of hooks.  Our Government has a catch quota system, a large number of smaller operators sold out to big companies who offered good money to them.  There were no restrictions on the fishing in the Gulf where snapper breed, but reduced the number of fish per person to recreation fisherman, making stupid rules like even legal fish can be reduced if you catch a number of other fish types.  If you have 9 snapper only 2 or 3 king fish are allowed.  So today to try and catch fish you had to buy a top class reel and a fibreglass rod, to have top grade nylon monofilm line, with special curved hooks that rust away if they are lost.  Then of course a special block of frozen berley to bait the fish, also frozen squid and pilchards for bait, then you find all the area you fished as a boy with your Father and he with his Father is now a Marine Reserve.  If you want fish and chips at the local takeaways on Great Barrier Island they cannot use local caught fish, it has to come from the mainland.  So what does a fish look like?

See the NZ Herald dated 16 January 1990 and read a report by Trevor De Cleene on his fishing days.

“Its no longer the bay of plenty” by Trevor De Cleene MP”

For 30 years or so I have actively fished out of Tauranga.  It is true that even when I began, the days of Zane Grey, the famous American western-writer, were long gone.

On the walls of the social room at Mayor Island his photographs showed fences made from the bills of marlin caught in the waters surrounding “the Mayor”, nevertheless in 1959, 14 or more boats serviced the needs of anglers and marlin were boated in their hundreds.

In small bays such as the “bait pond”, pelagic fish, the like of kahawai and trevally, were in such schools that 10 minutes or so sufficed to catch enough bait for the day’s trolling.  Even at sea far from reefs great shoals of mackerel, kahawai, trevally and maomao dotted the ocean.

A sure sign of game fish was the roar of the shoal and the surge of white water as it acted in unison to escape the predator shark or marlin working it from blow.

A pot or two cast overboard on the way out yielded crayfish for the table.  A stray line sunk beneath the schools yielded snapper in abundance.

Merely clad in woollen long underwear and a jersey we moved among the rocks on the shoreline feeling for, and taking, crayfish and paua.

This was typical of the New Zealand coast at this time.  Holidaymakers from Wellington travelled to the Wairarapa rocky beaches out from Blackhead and Waipawa to throw their pots from rocks at low tide to recover more than enough crayfish for themselves and their friends.

From my own 18ft 6in (5.6m) clinker open boat with a series E. Ford 10 petrol engine, three of us took 21 groper in one and a-half hours in 90 feet (27.4m) of water, not one under 40 pounds (18kg) weight.

This was the New Zealand as I knew it as a young man.  Fish in the sea for all – deer and pig in the hills – rabbits for sport and table, and the only young man carrying a knife a New Zealand hunter, superbly fit.

Now, of course, it is the gilded, tattooed,emaciated city-slicker with the only gleam in his eyes the product of drugs rather than lust for life.  He is the knife carrier of the new decades.

If Captain Cook, the great navigator, were again to round East Cape from Poverty Bay, I very much doubt if he would, from the activity at sea, call the Tauranga area the Bay of Plenty.

The greed of mankind has, in those 30 years, rendered it a virtually lifeless sea – a comparative desert where once the oasis bloomed.

Eight crayfish licences work the zone.  The floats and ropes of the pots dot every reef up to 60m beneath the surface.  They foul the propeller shafts of the boats at night and their baskets of bait entrap an increasingly scarce supply of the delicacy.

Does the New Zealander dine upon its flesh? Nay, not so! It is to the American, Japanese and European markets that the fish are sent.  Most New Zealanders cannot afford to feast on the harvest of their own coasts.

The marlin – what of the marlin?

Joe Walding told me that in 1974 while returning by air from the United States, the aircraft developed engine trouble and landed in Guam.  He said there were freezers full of marlin, broadbill, tuna – all the product of the Japanese dory liners interrupting the movement of the fish to New Zealand.

I caught, tagged and released a black marlin off Cairns in Australia.  Three years later a badge from the Game Fishing Club of New York certified to its catch off the South American coast.

Their travels now face “wall of death” nets and the sport fishing fleet of Tauranga is no more.  Only six weeks ago, we saw a purse seiner operating out of Tauranga working “The Schooner”.

A big school of mackerel was close in on the rock where it couldn’t be got at.  The boat waited as the alcoholic waits outside for the pub to open.  As soon as the school moved from the security of the shallows, around went the dory – the mesh closed and more New Zealand fish were sent to be used for crayfish bait off Western Australia.

There are four such large boats operating out of Tauranga.  While foreign boats chase the tuna around the Pacific in winter, these boats stay in New Zealand and rape our pelagic fish, making the green all red with their blood.

A spotter plane on a frosty morning with the ocean like glass, sees every ripple of the survivors.  It sends the purse seiners to their slaughter of our now limited stocks of fish. All this I have seen and ponder upon.

Are the televisions, motor cars  and stereos really worth the privacy of the heritage we should be preserving for our children?  Will the resource be so raped that even the breeding stocks of fish will go? Will there be anything to bequeath to the following generations?

My children, observing the comparative deserts of sea today, can only believe the photographic evidence of times gone by.  What it was like in the “old man’s days”.

Surely, some sanity must tell us: keep the big fishing boats well offshore, let the stocks revive, prevent the trawlers coming close in to the breakers.  At least give our amateur fishermen a chance to enjoy the sea air and the beauty of their coasts.  Let them eat off the sea’s bounty, even if it has to be in competition with the Japanese, Taiwanese and all the other “eses”.

What profits it a man who gains a Mercedes, if in the process he can’t even catch his own snapper?”