Wairau River draws salmon fishing fans

Wairau River draws salmon fishing fans

The Wairau River in Marlborough is settling into a new role as a salmon fishing river – with the latest spawning run one of the best ever.

The Wairau, in the north of the South Island, flows for 170 kilometres from the Southern Alps, to finally reach the sea to the north of Blenheim.

Fish & Game’s Nelson / Marlborough Region says the aerial counts by helicopter carried out in May were impressive. “Counts in the Upper Wairau and Rainbow Rivers of fish (live and dead) produced a superb tally of 379 – just one away from the 2008 total of 380 fish,” says Fish & Game Officer Lawson Davey.

“For some reason it’s started to fire over the past few years, and while we’d love to say it’s all down to good management, the truth is we’re not completely sure why it’s improved to the extent it has.

“It’s likely there are some environmental factors at sea coming into play, and to be fair – we have also undertaken more extensive spawning surveys in the river in recent years.”

But he says there are probably even more salmon present than the counts have shown, partly because the area counted was smaller than in 2008. At that time counts were undertaken in the Wairau from the Waihopai upstream. This year’s count was only carried out upstream from the Branch, due to discolouration from TrustPower maintenance works on the Branch hydro scheme intake.

“There are also more anglers targeting salmon in the Wairau, and it’s coming under greater pressure. More and more anglers are targeting salmon than in the past, when they were more of a bycatch with the river fished mostly for trout. ”

The Chinook salmon from the Wairau are generally smaller than those caught in the East Coast fishery further south, with most weighing in around three to six kilos, and only about 20 percent in a larger range from six to nine kilos.

In any event, the river is now gaining its own salmon fishing followers, Mr Davey says, particularly with local anglers who don’t want to drive across to the West Coast or further south to the better known salmon rivers. One or two Blenheim sports shops also reported selling out of Zed lures used for salmon this season, so the fishery is definitely “on the radar” now for many anglers.

Other rivers in the region didn’t show quite such good results The count in the Upper Clarence, Acheron, Severn, and Alma rivers came to 197 live and 15 dead salmon. This was lower than the 2008 count but similar to the 2009 count in the Clarence – unfortunately in 2009 the Acheron Catchment wasn’t able to be counted due to snow melt. Unlike the Wairau, the Clarence fishery is essentially a river-mouth only fishery, it reportedly did not fish so well with conditions at the mouth not very suitable for much of the season.”

It has been pleasing to see large schools of trout in the Clarence catchment in particular, Mr Davey adds.

Anglers who want to fish the Wairau River are reminded to check the regulations which apply on the Nelson / Marlborough regional page of Fish & Game’s website: www.fishandgame.org.nz
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