Native Fish Trip?

[ajbroome]

markoshark said...

> I'll bring you down a bottle of wine as I can't stand the stuff...

No need but I wont say 'no'.

There'll be some beer in the fridge (if you get to it before Richard) and probably some vodka or whatever in the cupboard. I'm sure you'll be able to manage.

E-mail me and I'll give you the address etc.

You realise it's a good 7hr drive from Auckland, right?

Andrew.

[markoshark]

Oh yeah

I have an MP3 player in my car, so i'll be fiinneee

Besides, i've been wanting to see Stella's setup for a while.

heh.

[Stella]

Stella's setup is kinda sad at the moment, had a bad time of it recently, but you'll get the idea... :oops:

Andrew and I just went poking about in the Mangahao stream near the Shannon hydro installation. FOund a very interesting site that looked totally unlikely (not enough hiding places) but wound up being full of redfins and a small eel. We only turned a couple of rocks so we are very much looking forward to going back with a couple of nets! Shall have to include it on the list of sites to visit.

So far my list of confirmed people is thus:

Me

Andrew Broome

Pete Sebborn

Markoshark

BlueandKim

Richard Littin

MrEd

People who replied earlier and may be coming (please confirm)

Foxglove

Alex Tret

Nooboon

I have PM'ed those who are confirmed with my address. Anyone else who is interested is still very welcome to come, just let me know and I will give you my address.

This should be a great weekend! I am very excited at checking out some of these sites more thoroughly, and getting to show others will be cool :bounce:

[ajbroome]

markoshark said...

> Woohoo, a couch!.

Hey, get in touch with me ASAP.

Andrew.

[Foxglove]

Hey there - sorry but I'm out now. Lack of money and have to spend weekend time doing committee stuff.

But today I spotted an interesting big fish in a local bush creek - about 9 inches long (22cm). I'll go back and check it out tomorrow. see if it's trout or galaxid...

[markoshark]

I just wrenched a muscle in my neck, I won't be able to come down either, which sucks

Driving when you can't look left without getting massive twinges of pain = very bad

Sorry guys.

[Caryl]

What do you have to look left for? :lol:

[Stella]

That is a bummer.

If you ever feel like coming down this way some other time just let me know. We can easily put you up for the night and are always up for a fish hunt

[markoshark]

must... find... time... off...

Haven't been for a decent drive in a while

[HaNs]

Im coming sat night!

[caserole]

I've just read this thread and would have loved to come, there's a stream close to were I live when check 10 years a go was full of the most colourful bullies, big red one's and small blue one's( think there called blue gills or something like that).

At these time I really hate my job, one a penny two a penny HOT X BUNS

So I wouldn't have been able to go anyway.

Have a good experience guy's and girl's, let us know how you got on.

If you want to know where the stream is Andrew just pop in next time your in town.

It would give me an excuse to take my waders for a walk outside of whitebait season.

[Stella]

Just got back from Day One. We went to the farm creek and Manawatu river during the afternoon, then the Turitea Stream by massey uni at night.

'We' consists of Andrew, Pete, Peter and Ang, James, Richard and I.

Caught tiny upland bullies and a few interesting crayfish at the farm creek and uplands, common bullies and TORRENTFISH in the manawatu! I have never looked in the Manawatu river before, so it was quite a success. We were just under the Ashhurst bridge.

Then we came back for food and on to the Turitea Stream by Massey.

I had borrowed a kickass spotlight from Massey and Peter turned up with an even bigger one. They have a seperate battery pack and really cut through the water (and the battery strap really cuts through your shoulder).

Again we had some amazing success! We caught lots of large (10cm?) common, redfin and (Andrew disagrees) Cran's bullies, Peter caught a large trout (hiss!) and a small longfin eel. Three baby trout were also caught, and a massive eel, but they baby perch (hiss!) got away. At one point Pete just kept on turning up with fish, one of which was a juvenile giant kokopu! Just amazing, I had no idea they were there. It had a nasty wound on its back but hopefully will be fine (it was an slightly older injury but still raw).

Tomorrow we are off to Lake Papaitonga (kokopu), Ohau River (all manner of things) and the stream by Shannon which may yeild a few interesting galaxiids. THen at night we are heading up to Kahuterawa in the Ranges.

I think we have a few converts to the joys of native fish hunting

[supasi]

I GREEN with envy!

[caserole]

It sounds wet and muddy >>> great

[Stella]

Wow, Day Two was incredible! It was Saturday.

It started with Pete, Andrew, Richard and I.

We went down to Levin and picked up Mark, his young daughter and Paul and went to Lake Papaitonga. Mark had set a trap the previous night in the hope of catching the kokopu we had seen in the tiny muddy forest streams there.

I had made the trap very cleverly out of an office style wire mesh rubbish bin with cloth netting added to make a funnel like an eel trap. This was held open with wire and held inside the trap with wire clips. The idea was undo the clips and the funnel inverts, pouring the captured fish into the bucket.

It worked perfectly....

Except the fish were SOOOOO much BIGGER than I ever expected would get through the entrance! I am guessing the sizes here, but there were three banded kokopu (20-25cm, 15cm and 10cm roughly) and a eel possibly 50cm long. It took a lot of poking to get them out of the trap. Just stunning fish.

The surprising thing was after all the fish were out, there were two dislocated crayfish claws in the trap..... no other parts left....!

That site must be just thick with kokopu.

So I bounced out of there happy as Larry, the others followed slightly more sedately... and on to Ohau River.

There we took nets each and went about lifting rocks and catching heaps of fish. Lots of redfin and upland bullies, four sweet wee torrentfish, a couple of good eels, seven inanga and a multitude of crayfish!

We spent a good bit of time there, had a small picnic on the gravel and eventually left. Paul and Mark left our group at this point, leaving Richard, Pete, Andrew and I to go on to the Mangahao stream out the back of Shannon.

This was a tiny tributary of the Mangahao stream, barely 5cm deep and a metre across, though it got wider and deeper and faster and narrower in different places. Richard had a very fast first catch, a juvenile banded kokopu (or so we thought). It took a long time to catch much in that stream, but we had some very good catches: six koaro (only site we saw them) two were large 10cm fish and four just-post-whitebait. Also several very nice redfin bullies, and I think that was the total species count. We chased some 15cm kokopu around for a while, but they eluded us in the end. Oh, and Richard caught a good-sized eel.

I took the 'banded' home as I had a few of my bandeds jump out and needed to restock. I noticed it looked rather unlike a banded in the tank, its mouth was tiny in comparison. Could this be a shortjaw? Surely not, the chances were so remote... Bear in mind that these are not often seen and I have NEVER seen one before.

Anyway, we returned, I set up the new fish (certainly a tiny proportion of what we caught) in their quarantine tanks, we went out for curry then met up with Peter (from the previous day) and Paul (from earlier in the day) and went spotlighting up Kahuterawa Stream .

We seemed to break into two groups. Pete, Paul and I went on ahead and Peter, Andrew and Richard were behind. My group were just looking and the other group were catching (lifting rocks). There were heaps of trout again, a good number of eels, crayfish and redfin bullies.

Then my group found this small pool. About 1m wide and 1.5m long, .5m deep, fairly still with lots of big stones in it. We saw about 5 trout lurking in there, a few crayfish and some bullies. Then this other fish that looked different.... We had figured the way to tell a trout from a kokopu was the kokopu have their dorsal right at the end of the body whereas trout have them in the middle. This dorsal was definitely at the end.

Paul was called over and a combined netting approach was carefully orchestrated. The fish was caught and... it was a kokopu... it *could* have been a shortjaw... It was about 20cm at the most. We kept it in the net but in the water, then saw a smaller one.... caught that, looked like the 'banded' that Richard caught earlier... Then an even bigger one appeared! Also caught it, I would say this was a little over 20cm and DEFINITELY a shortjaw kokopu! I was bouncing off the walls!

Went back to find the other team, they had a bucket of nice redfin bullies and a lone small galaxiid - yet another shortjaw! I took them up and showed them our fish, all very exciting and many photos taken by all.

As we were leaving Andrew found a HUGE dolomedes (aquatic) spider

SO much fun. I can't believe that we saw every single species I not only expected to see, but also the ones that there was a tiny weeny chance we might see!

Bullies: upland, redfin, common, cran's (I think)

Galaxiids: Inanga, banded kokopu, giant kokopu, shortjaw kokopu, koaro

Torrentfish

Eels: long and short fin

Crayfish

Oops, just realised we didn't see any smelt!

Well, we will just have to do another trip then

My thanks to those who came along and made it such a great trip! I know everyone had a good time and seemed to learn heaps.

This is the biggest shortjaw we caught:

More photos to follow, I only took a couple. Andrew and Pete had more.

[Jammos]

I would just like to say a big tahnks to stella and the guys for putting this tri[ on!!

Even though i couldn't make it for most of the items (stupid wallpaper man) I must admit i learn't lots - never actually seen any prior to the day.

And after all of the day i think the definate fav had to be the torrent fishes!! so thanks heaps and heaps stella

[Adrienne]

damn, bu--er and everything else. I've just read this now.

[Stella]

Thanks James for coming along, it was really good to see you!

I think torrentfish are a favourite of many, so cute and different-looking! Peter contemplated setting up a tank of those after seeing my photos

I think we will definitely do another one next summer, this one was such a success. Hopefully my book will be printed by then

[doch]

sounds like a good time was had by all maybe next time i will come

[purplecatfish]

Wow it sounds like you had an amazing time. Wish I could have come. Hopefully I won't be working on the next one.

But I went fresh water fishing with my 7 year old son and we caught inanga, fresh water shrimp and yellow eyed mullet for his 1m x 2m x 0.5m pond. (It used to be his sand pit and sometimes it's our pond ).

[Foxglove]

Yay, sounds like a great adventure. Lucky to get all the different species, too!

I look forward to the photos.

Well done!

Next time I will make more effort to get there. :roll:

[Stella]

oh yeah... um, photos..... need to get them up sometime......!

[Heir]

I saw a huge dolomedes when i was fishing for shrimps...

(I hate spiders. FYI.)

Scary thing, covered in tiny air bubbles and it kinda looked silver so I was like OHHH SHINY.. what is it?!? *poke* then it moved.... not so pretty anymore.

THEN I screamed like a girl and ran off. :oops: