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XXVII
Trout

Handle him tenderly as if you loved him.-Iz. Walton on baiting with worm.
The trout he swims in his wet, wet world,
   And I walk dry in another;
Yet I cannot but feel as I'm winding my reel,
   That he's truly my own little brother.

ϒποκριτης

In the early nineties I was visiting a friend who had a station in Hawke's Bay. The river behind his homestead, the Maraetotara was a succession of clear deep pools broken by steep short rapids or falls. It had been noted of old for its immense eels, and now trout were said to be growing large in it, and, though no one could catch them, they were certainly there, as one night we were all suddenly in darkness owing to one big chap having jammed the turbine that actuated the dynamo.

This was the first chance I ever had of trying for trout, and it was not by any manner of means to be missed, so finding there was an old rod and line kicking about and even a hook or two, I was soon away up the river side with it, looking for bait, It was a cool, page 189dull, very windy day, with no flying insects visible, not even a grasshopper, but by kicking over some dry cow-pads I soon found a large black Indian cricket, and fixing him carefully on, slung the line well out in the middle of a wind-swept pool. It seemed a forlorn sort of business, but, oh, fullness of delight, at only the second cast I had him, a real great long brown trout. And with what almost hysterical anxiety did I run with him, once in my landing net, chains and chains up the bank, and away from the river, to be quite safe before I took him out of it! And how I walked back to the station with whole bands of music inside me, playing "See the Conquering Hero," as I brought in the first really properly caught trout they had had. He was something under a yard long, but I will only say as to his condition and weight that it was obvious that he must have been very hungry. But all hands had a taste of him, and to me, at any rate, he seemed quite eatable.

Many hours did I subsequently spend along that river, watching huge fat brutes swim round and round, gorging the live cicadas I chucked in, but turning away in disgust from those with gut attached, fished I never so wisely. I only landed one more, he also for good reason, indiscriminately page 190hungry, but I was an enthusiast from that time on.

Our own beautiful mountain streams looked the very thing for trout, but none had yet been turned into them, and except for eels they were fishless. So when an offer of Government trout ova was made to us, it was accepted with enthusiasm. A pack-horse was sent down to the coast to meet the boat, and in due course the eggs arrived, about the size of peas, in well-packed, ice-cooled boxes. In the meantime we had knocked together a twelve-foot shallow trough a foot wide, dividing it into half a dozen sections, and having made a small dam in the creek we led a pipe therefrom to it so that a constant stream should flow right through. The eggs were then spread out on a layer of finely broken stone at the bottom of the trough, and carefully examined every day. A dead egg, turning as it does a dull white, becomes at once conspicuous among its almost transparent fellows, and must be immediately taken out. A small glass tube is used with the thumb kept tight on one end until the other is near the dead egg, which, on lifting the thumb, rushes up the tube without disturbing the others, and is safely removed when the thumb is replaced on the tube top.

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By and by an almost microscopic dark line emerged from the top of each egg, and gradually grew into a little fish comically anchored on an enormous stomach. Though, even when the stomachlike egg was absorbed, there was still enough invisible food in the water to keep the troutlings going for a time, yet it was soon necessary to give them more. Boiled liver was then mashed into a sort of milk with water and a little of it shaken in from time to time out of a pepper-pot. Then the liver was less and less finely divided and finally only minced, and not even cooked.

When about an inch and a half long, the fish were put into two deep trenches, supplied with water from the same stream, and their growth was then rapid but very uneven. A bold fish who rushed his food without hesitation would soon be three or four times as big as the more timid; therefore we had to keep the big ones by themselves to give the others a chance. Then came the day when, lifting the fish with a hand net into kerosene tins filled with weed and water, we carried them down to the river. Without weed to hide in, the trout would damage themselves in their fright, by butting their heads against the tin.

But all this trouble was in vain, for though page 192one or two grown trout were very occasionally seen for some years, they never increased, and have now entirely disappeared. It is believed that in our soft rock formation, either the rivers get too hopelessly thick in the winter floods, and the trout die, or their non-increase is accounted for by the fact that the thinnest coating of mud or silt kills the ova at once. They need a clear winter stream and clean shingle to rest on, and with us there was seldom either.

On harder formations, however, trout, as is well known, have done extremely well, and as no private property in fishing rights is recognised in New Zealand, it is a fine place for the wandering angler. (Plate XX.)

Later on when from the far boundary of our district some fifty miles away, where the rock was harder, came reports that trout had been seen in the Ruakituri river above the Reinga falls, a young Scots friend and myself got on board the little De Dion car and started off to investigate.

We were hospitably received at a sheep station, and set ourselves, rather forlornly, to work rapid after rapid with the fly. To our great joy at last, about mid-day, we had one rise, and landed a half-pound trout, the first ever caught in the river. But the sky had been gradually clouding over, and as the low page 193railless bridge, over the tearing rapid just above the falls, would be submerged should the river rise, we hastened aboard the car, and back to our little hotel, where my young friend spent most of the ensuing three days Sou'-Easter, strutting up and down the veranda practising on the landlord's bagpipes. To my mind this music always sounds best a little further up the glen, and I was not sorry when the weather changed.

At Waterville, in Ireland, I once had a day in a boat on a small lake with two gillies, and we got twenty-one pounds of small trout, and found it dull and monotonous work. Whereas, in New Zealand, I have come home rejoicing after a glorious afternoon's sport without a fish in my basket. It was water out of a great lake (Plate XXI), perfectly clear, so clear as to be quite blue, tearing down over beds of great boulders. The fish, all in the full rush, but each behind a boulder, were in magnificent condition, from one and a half to two pounds. You had to fish up stream, and the fly came back so quick that it was tiring work, but when you got one hooked, it was some fun. My impression of that afternoon is that of having various large fish darting here, there and everywhere, and up and round my head, till they broke me one after the other. We page 194did land them other days, before breakfast, and at any odd time, and they were splendid eating. Fried they were a little disappointing, but a Maori having showed us "another and a better way," we cut them into big steaks and crammed them into a billy with just enough water to boil them. They were then delicious, and as red as salmon.

Then we wound up the hill road a thousand feet or so, and came suddenly on Lale Waikaremoana surrounded by bush-covered hills with one great peak overhanging (Plates I and XXII). Here it was spinning from a boat, which you can hardly call sport.

But if when rowing slowly across a beautiful bay with the reflection of bush and mountain dark on the still water, you get a sudden tug, you may see something. Away behind the boat will come clean out of the dark still water perhaps more than once, a thing of beauty, a perfect shining shape, whose back is the darkest olive green, and all the rest of gleaming silver, sometimes just faintly marked with crimson. They ran large, these rainbows, my biggest being fourteen pounds. They were not wasted; we had them smoked, and took away a fifty-pound sack for our friends.

I do not happen to be one of those people who can just stroll idly about and worship the "beauties of nature." I must, as a rule, be doing something, employed in some country pursuit or sport, or the said beauties do not seem properly to soak in.

The most vivid picture of English country that remains with me, in greens and browns, with fleeting shapes of fawny greys and a spot of scarlet, was bitten into my mind years ago, going hard, in a run with the Worcester. Hunting, whether fox or butterfly, exploring, even gardening, and above all fishing, are what I need to put me in touch with nature, and on that little river I think I felt more completely in harmony with her than ever in my life. The stream flowed in varying sparkling channels over nearly black rock. The great trees on either side formed a solemn arch high above it, while here and there on the rock-strewn banks stood big tree ferns, perfect in the windless air, while filmy ferns and others either humbly carpeted the ground, or covered it with great arching fronds, or left it altogether to climb vigorously up into the great spreading branches overhead.

Silence, solitude, quiet beauty and cheer-page 196ful running water; what could a lover of nature want more? One thing. Trout. And behind each boulder, in every quick still run, and in every linn, exactly where a trout should rightly be, a fine trout was. Nor was he ever contemptuous of my fly, and though sometimes he only rose to show he was where he should be, enough of him but not too many came into my basket, for he would please, but would not sicken me. Each little trout that I missed laughed merrily, I fancied, as he shot away, and I seemed only to hear a gentle sigh of "done this time" from those that went into my basket. It was impossible to believe on such a day that they and I were not in harmony.

Alone on that stream, with no thought of before or after, I came as near the perfection of simple quiet happiness as ever in my life. I would not wish to visit it again. I should fear to damage a memory so perfect.

In another fishing expedition we slept at a little inn in an out-of-the-way corner of the country at the head of a deep rocky gorge of the Makuri river. The landlord had had to go to town, and his wife, a woman of no strength of character, was left in charge. The second night the local drinkers seemed to be having things all their own way, and the row was great. My mate and I were in page 197a little bar parlour by ourselves and did not worry, nor when appealed to to enforce order did we feel that it was quite sufficiently our funeral for us to interfere. Half a dozen men were roaring drunk and the woman cook was on the stairs throwing plates at all comers.

But there was still Biddy, the Irish housemaid, to reckon with; she was a better man for the job than either of us. She put the silly landlady aside, she subdued the cook, she locked up the bar, she ran some of the men out, and those who were staying in the house she put to bed and took away their trousers, and when we ourselves turned in we found the house perfectly quiet and the housemaid half triumphant and half apologetic. Something like a girl was Biddy.

Gulls and shags were said to be destroying the trout in the Tuki Tuki river in Hawkes Bay, which winds about in a bed of shingle half a mile wide. A young sportsman from England, being at a loose end, took the job of patrolling this water with a gun, and pitched his tent handy to it. Returning one stormy evening, he and his big long-wooled retriever, both wet to the skin, he found inches of water all round and in his tent, his bunk, raised on four stakes, being the only dry spot. For this haven, having stripped to the buff in the open, he made a dive in the page 198gathering dusk, only to find that the retriever had got there first!

Returning to New Zealand in 1917 I fished on and around the great Taupo Lake. The weather was for the most part perfect, but the fish that year were small, 5 1b. being my heaviest. Most of the trout there were caught at the mouth of the river in the following way. You wade down it into the lake till the colour of the water warns you it is not safe to go further, and then you let out with the current about 40 yards of line with a very big fly at the end of it and just wait. And when you hook your fish you reel him in, and that is all there is "to it." Some men will contentedly do this day after day for weeks! If you do not worry about your basket, there is more fun along the clean white pebbly shore. Here you will sometimes see the tail or back fin of a feeding fish, and casting out to him is then cheery sport enough.

There was, too, a little bush-surrounded lakelet separated from the big water by a shingle bank and full of quarter-pound trout. I took the Ford there through a virgin track of rock and pool, with a load of Maori youngsters, and had great fun, the eldest paddling me round in an old dug-out. When we had caught enough, this boy split open the little fish and soon had them spitted on twigs in the page 199ground, all round the fire we had made. I have never eaten a more delicious lunch. It was a most enjoyable expedition, especially when we twice stuck in the pools on the track and all hands were needed to haul the Ford through.