Wildside - Close to Home Pursuits in Winter

Neither fish nor fowl too easy

© Zane Mirfin, Wildside Column, Neither fish nor fowl too easy, Nelson Mail, 8 May 2010

Bird in the hand: John Stewart of Brightwater with some of the morning’s bag of ducks, shot near a pond in Wakefield.	Winter Brown: John Dow, Chairman of Pike River Coal, catches winter prize.

The first birds swung around the pond like ballerinas of the sky as they pirouetted downwards toward us. It’s still possible to get a good dose of hunting and fishing close to home – if you know where to look.

THE alarm clock started screaming at 4.50am and with great effort I struggled out of bed.

The first Saturday of May is revered among keen wild fowlers who celebrate the opening of the duck shooting season every year, so when my mate John Stewart of Brightwater asked me to shoot a small farm pond at Wakefield with him I just couldn’t say ‘no’.

They say home is where your heart is, and sometimes you can’t always get to the best places and you just have to make do with what is on your doorstep.

Nelson duck shooting is generally considered to be pretty poor compared with further down the South Island. Agriculture is limited up here with very little grain and crops grown to boost duck numbers.

Outlying areas such as Murchison and Golden Bay offer more opportunity but there are still a few mallards around Tasman Bay if you know where to look, and John’s small shallow pond out in the middle of a grassy paddock was definitely worth a go.

Setting up our layout blinds and decoys before daylight was a mad frenzy before the legal shooting time of 6.30am.

The shots had already started in the distance when we jumped into our hides ready to go. The first birds swung around the pond like ballerinas of the sky as they pirouetted downwards toward us. John fired and missed and I was just too slow.

The next bird that came within range wasn’t so lucky, and I folded it cleanly, hearing the satisfying thump of the duck hitting the ground on the other side of the pond.

More birds came our way throughout the morning with both John and I shooting a few birds apiece. It was a great morning out and best of all, I was home for lunch with the family.

Finding places to shoot close to home isn’t getting any easier with fewer ducks, more land subdivision, and less opportunity, but if you look and ask there are still worthwhile places to go.

That afternoon we went as a family to a fun cross-country run organised by Nelson Athletics at Saxton Field. Dave Dixon was the man in charge, and it was a great event with a record 200 kids turning up to run in four races.

Dave is also a mad keen fisherman, a champion New Zealand coarse angler who has won national titles catching fish such as tench, perch, rudd and carp.

Dave and I have often lamented that there are no coarse fishing opportunities close to urban areas for young anglers in the Nelson and Marlborough regions, but that is another story.

As the kids splashed through mud and water, I just couldn’t keep my eyes off all the fat, contented mallards floating around on Saxton Pond – safe and sound on opening day.

In the evening, John Stewart took us to another pond around the Coastal Highway. It was a beautiful spot that he had been feeding with an automatic feeder that scatters wheat a few times a day for several weeks before the season. My
boys Jake and Ike had a great time helping John scatter a bucketful of acorns in among the wheat before settling down in the layout blinds we had set up safely behind John and I. We were camouflaged in the dead vegetation surrounding the pond. We saw ducks, we called to ducks, but alas, only nonshootable grey teal came within range, proving that even feeding ducks isn’t a surefire method to success. It didn’t matter – we all had a good time and John even promised to take the boys out pukeko shooting to a favourite local possie one night after school.

On Sunday, I was trout fishing close to home. Nelson’s Linda and John Dow are wonderful people and we’ve had some fun fishing trips together in the past. A chance meeting down the streets of Nelson last week set the scene for my last guide day of the season when John, who is chairman of Pike River Coal, had a special guest for the weekend, celebrated United States angel investor Bill Payne.

The day was a cracker, sunny, calm, with no wind on the lower Motueka River, which is open to winter fishing from May 1. The Mot is a great local river – scenic, close to home, excellent access and usually plenty of fish. The river was a little high, with a touch of colour after recent rains, and the moon phase wasn’t good but it was the only day available to Bill so there we were.

I’ve always been convinced that moon phase is a major factor in the success or failure of fishing and hunting trips, and the same conditions that meant many had reduced duck tallies at the weekend also affected our fishing.

The company was excellent and I sure learnt a lot about mining and investment over the course of the day but the river was like a biological desert, with no bugs hatching, fish rising or biting our flies.

We plied the river with everything and flogged it to a foam but to no avail. Later we came across another fly angler who hadn’t touched a fish all day.

John saved our bacon with two beautiful brown trout after I had to dig deep into my box of magic tricks.

Fortunately, we had something to show for our efforts at the day’s end, with John keeping a 2 kilogram jack for his fish smoker and we gratefully received plastic bags of nashi pears and apples from our generous orchardist friend who allowed us access through his property to the river. The catching may have not have been epic but the fresh, sweet
fruit certainly made the day.

Interestingly, my last outing this week, a night sortie spearing flounder with my brother Scott, was a runaway success.
When we had two dozen beauties safely in the onion sack we decided it was time to head for home.

Fishing and hunting close to home is like that. You just have to keep going, keep enjoying yourself, and sooner or later the results will come.

Sometimes it’s easy to get depressed about the continual loss of outdoor rights, resources and opportunities here in New Zealand, but there will always be fishing and hunting opportunities close to home for those with an eye for the main chance.

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