Anglers Declare War on Blocked Trout Fishing Access.

A national trout fishing organisation has come out blazing against profiteering commercial operators buying sole access rights to rivers and thus locking the angling public out.

New Zealand Federation of Freshwater Anglers president Jim Hale of Manawatu said there was a rapid proliferation of the practice.

"It's like an insidious cancer, with access to prime fishing rivers being refused to the angling public", he said. " It is illegal to charge for the right to fish in New Zealand's rivers and lakes".

Known as "exclusive capture" the practice is often initiated by commercial operators who pay a landowner large sums of money for the exclusive right to fish. Usually prime backcountry, wilderness waters with "trophy trout" are involved.

Exclusive capture started about twenty years ago in the high country in the mid-North Island, on rivers such as the Mohaka and upper Rangitikei, has been increasing ever since with the result that rivers in both Islands have been captured by unscrupulous commercial interests.

" It is practiced by those who have captured these trout fishing waters for their own financial profiteering, even though the running water and the fish within them do not belong to them," said Jim Hale.

Mr Hale, himself a farmer, said in most cases the landowner is probably not aware of the legalities. The vast majority of freshwater anglers were respectful of normal property rights and respected stock and property. Normal property rights give the right of any landowner to decline permission to cross private property. However, in these cases access is ‘selective’ and associated with money or "valuable considerations" changing hands.

"We realize the majority of guides do not practice exclusive capture, are affected by it and oppose it.

However, with New Zealand's trout fishing highly rated by international, national and local trout anglers, a minority of commercial interests were seeking to exploit the public's fisheries for exclusive personal commercial gain.

"This has rapidly developed into situations where such individuals and companies are controlling exclusive access to our publicly owned rivers, lakes and fisheries for personal gain, at the expense of the very angling public who own the resource", he said.

Jim Hale said the public nature of trout fishing in New Zealand had been set in the law books by the early pioneers who liberated trout and wanted to avoid the class system of the UK where the best trout and salmon waters are only available to the minority wealthy upper class, who ‘owned’ them.

"It's a legacy, a heritage handed down to us. We either protect the fishery or we lose it. We will work with the Minister, Fish and Game New Zealand, and any other body, when and where we deem it necessary to achieve this" he said.

“We realise that some already think of our fisheries as commodities that they have some kind of right to, or which they can lock up for private gain. But we will fight this scourge wherever we find it, with whoever is involved, with all of the determination and resources at our disposal. We owe it to our members and the angling public of New Zealand, to whom the resource belongs, and who this unscrupulous behaviour is ripping off” said Mr Hale.

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