Part 2 finished with major changes for freshwater fishing, the Government creating Fish & Game and reducing the former 23 Acclimatisation Societies down to 12 regional and a national council. This set up has controlled the sports fishery for the last 33 years and recently further change has been debated.
The minister stated at the Inaugural meeting of the transitional council, “You are here to administer sports fish and game nationally. Your decisions must be made in the best interests of anglers and hunters without letting parochial interest colour your judgement.” He went a bit further to say, “An important aim of the new system is to maximise recreational opportunities for hunters and anglers. For the first time sports fish and game councils have a statutory responsibility to make fishing and game hunting accessible to as many New Zealanders as possible.” (Hon P Woollaston 1990 Minister of Conservation)
At the time none of this meant much to me. My fishing mates had graduated from surf casting to mainly surf fishing for sea run salmon around the Canterbury rivers by now and I finally joined them, towards the end of the run. That was enough, though; I got a salmon: the take, the fight, the adrenaline rush; I was hooked. Now began the acquiring of the gear needed to catch these amazing fish – something, 35 years later, I still find hard to control.
RODS
When salmon fishing river mouths and the surf on South Island salmon rivers apart from the Waimakariri river, you really need two different set-ups; a long light rod for the surf and a shorter 7 foot (2.1m) was normal for the gut (inside the mouth). I could not afford the expensive new graphite rods so settled for, in the surf, a hollow glass 9 foot (275cm) Abu Boxer general purpose rod. This was replaced after shattering with a custom-built imported carbon fibre Tricast Dynamics 12 foot (3.66m) carp blank set up as a spinning rod (gifted to me by my son Jeremy, who was by now working in The Complete Angler).
The gut rod was a carbon fibre composite 7 foot (2.1M) Silstar 60. This lasted about
