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TROUT FISHING WITH MAURICE RODWAY - Weekly Column: 05 December 1997
 Southland, New Zealand

A BREAK IN THE WEATHER

While forest fires are destroying vast tracts of Australian bush, and Nor’westers are either shriveling or swelling east coast rivers, depending whether or not their headwaters rise in the rain soaked Alps or the parched foot hills, we in the south have been drenched by sou’westerlies and lashed by gales. El nino has taken hold and the smoke from factory fires of the last hundred years has at last begin to have a direct effect on us. We who have produced them for so long.

Global warming is coming home. Not only threatening to swamp Pacific islands and do other nasty things that somehow seem rather remote, but visiting all of us. Global warming will not only result in the disappearance of some nations but it will periodically flood most of the worlds cities, those built within a metre of the sea..

While the worlds leaders attempt to stop the process gaining momentum and at the same time try to protect the right of their citizens to continue to do so, floods, fire and storms rage the world over.

Trout anglers, even those in Southland, should make the most of present fishing opportunities because in a few years, opportunities will shrink. The windstorm that visited us last week could have been a rain storm of similar rarity, flooding homes and farms, and damaging trout habitats. The droughts of the east coast will shrink trout streams there and, more than over fishing, or bait fishing, or even some spear fishing, will take trout away from anglers more than ever before. 

Trout rely on constant flows of cool water. Raging floods and dried riverbeds are not suitable habitats for them. The more of these we have the fewer trout are left. Global warming will increase the intensity of storms, increase dry periods, and increase the height of floods. It will reduce the times when you can drift a royal Wulff over a fat trout hanging in the gentle current of a Southland stream.

Anglers have in the past rallied to protect their rights when these have been threatened. Trout farming has been made unlawful in New Zealand because of the political power anglers have. Access to rivers and streams here is probably the best in the world and is carefully guarded. Will anglers recognize the far greater threat of global warming, or will we see it as an event that might make life tough for those living on a Pacific atoll, but a little too remote to be of major concern. The outcome of the current Global Warming Summit, and the attitudes of our politicians to the subject will be the measure. I suspect the consequences need to be a little closer to home before anything real is done. Trouble is, by then we may as well pack away our fly rods.     .

Maurice Rodway
Southland, New Zealand                           E-mail: fishgame@southnet.co.nz

Article ©1997 Maurice Rodway, All Rights Reserved.
 

28 Nov 97   |   21 Nov 97   |    14 Nov 97

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