Hooked on trout fishing for records
Knee deep in the Waipara River in the 1960s, a six-year-old boy landed a four- pound trout. On that day, Michael Bate, just a tiddler himself, was hooked for life.
In the nearly five decades since, the Kaiapoi-born and bred man married, had children, worked at the freezing works, started a business, divorced and has semi- retired, but through it all there has always been fishing.
You could say it's been an addiction.
Bate's a quiet man. He speaks quietly but with passion and an almost manic light in his eyes as he talks about toiling long days at the works, then spending 17 nights in a row stalking salmon in the Rakaia, and of catching 21 of the hundreds of trout he saw crossing a hole one Christmas Eve.
Despite suffering chronic circulation problems that turn his legs painfully purple in the cold, Bate has tramped into and waded in every river in the South Island in search of his fishing fix.
As with any addiction, the score has to keep on getting bigger to achieve the same buzz, but that has not been a problem for Bate.
His latest brown trout, caught recently at Tekapo with a huhu grub on a six-pound nylon line, weighed at 39 pounds (17.7 kilograms), topping his previous record catch by a whole pound, and possibly achieving a national record. He has heard of others bigger, but not seen the pictures.
In the past 12 years, Bate has focused on the whoppers. It's called trophy fishing - the sport of out- witting the wily old monsters of the deep.
The skill is in getting the wary fish to take the bait, but once that has happened the landing of the big 'uns isn't that much of a challenge, Bate says. They're too fat and lazy to put up a sustained battle, but they make good eating.
"They're not big fighters. It's all over and done with in an hour. You just play them quietly, don't panic them.
"A southerly breeze is good. Quarter moonlight is good. This one had probably lived all her life under the salmon farm, picking up pellets which had fallen through the bottom of the cages.
"She had 3lb or 4lb of fat in her belly, and had probably spawned only once in her life. At that size, they're past breeding, so we're not interfering with fish numbers when we take them out."
Bate says the best breeders are those in the 4lb to 8lb range, and he's almost obsessed about looking after those, and their environment.
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"Once upon a time I just thought fishing, fishing, fishing.
"I took it for granted that it was something all New Zealanders could do, whenever they wanted. But things have changed a lot since my Dad [Tex Bate] first took me fishing in the Waipara. Every Kiwi kid should be able to have experiences like mine, but I worry that they won't. I'm angry about the state of our rivers, and I can't believe how short-sighted those in charge of their welfare are."
Bate says not only have dams, swamp drainage, irrigation, and krill-harvesting contributed to the declining fish population, but they have also changed the behaviour and habits of those remaining.
"Imagine if you lived in a glass hothouse. You wouldn't be acting normally either - too warm and knowing you were being observed. It's the same for fish in shallow water. Fish have always hidden in cool, deep holes and near the sides of a river at certain times of the day, but now they spend most of their time hugging the sides. They don't like being visible. That's their nature. Their habitat has changed."
Bate says he is not against irrigation and dairying as such, but believes everyone has a responsibility to make sure it's done sustainably.
He has looked at overseas systems of storing peak-flow water for irrigation, leaving a river to run normally in drier times, and while acknowledging it'll cost big money, suggests that's what our government and regional councils need to be aiming for. Out of all the big rivers in the South Island, only the Clarence is still in a pristine state, he says.
"And shamefully, the Waimak [Waimakariri] is the worst. It's a cesspit. As well as being siphoned off for irrigation, I see muck being discharged into it, almost every day. It shouldn't be allowed to continue. At this rate, in a few years our waterways will be wrecked for all recreational users.
"Isn't anyone thinking long- term? About tourism and why people come to our so-called clean and green country?"
Bate is prepared to put his money where his mouth is. In the 80s, he picked up a book and worked out a way to get another sort of buzz from his addiction.
Now, before the whopper trout are shared and devoured, the self- taught taxidermist retrieves the skin and head, moulds a new fibre- glass body from the original, and preserves it for all time.
All but two of the 100 specimens, ranging from 18lb to 39lb, on the walls of the Trophy Room at the The Hitching Post in Marshland Rd are his catches. But they are only a fraction of the total tally of nearly 50 years addiction to fishing.
The main purpose of the display, which is regarded as the best and biggest in the southern hemisphere, is to raise awareness about conservation and water issues.
Bate says the modest entry fee goes to the Acclimatisation Society to assist with restocking programmes.
It's strange to pick up the latest of these stiff, featherlight monsters, and realise that it once weighed the equivalent of six new- born human babies. Its stuffed companions are numbered and catalogued, but Bate knows them like old friends.
"This one came from the Rakaia. That's another girl. She's the same weight as this one, but two inches longer. This one has a brown tinge. That one has beautiful spots. Caught that one on a 4lb line in a southerly."
The trout are on show with glorious photography of the back- country rivers they came from, plus glass-cased displays of flies and other fishing paraphernalia.
These great prizes tell the story of the lad from Kaiapoi and his fervent hopes for the future of angling in New Zealand.
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