Nelson / Marlborough > Fishing

If you catch a tagged fish, please contact the regional Fish & Game office

Fish & Game New Zealand’s Nelson/Marlborough region offers some of the best, most easily accessible brown trout fishing in the country. In fact many of New Zealand’s fishing guides who specialise in sighted brown trout fishing, work in this region. There is wonderful diversity reflected in the waters of Nelson-Marlborough. Rivers in the Golden Bay area are crystal clear in normal flows and dark brown in freshes from tannic acid leaching out of the native bush catchments. Waimea basin catchments rise in the steep beech clad Richmond and Arthur ranges before flowing through intensely farmed lands growing pine trees, applies, kiwi fruit and hops.

The Murchison district offers everything from small feeder streams to the impressive Buller River. The Buller is New Zealand’s fifth largest river, originating from the alps in the Nelson Lakes National Park. The run off and snow melt from these mountains flow into Lakes Rotoiti and Rotoroa. The two Lake outlets form the upper Buller River until it is joined by the Matakitaki, Mangles, Matiri and Maruia at the ‘four rivers plain’ near Murchison. Marlborough rivers are a total contrast to the western Nelson rivers, often being blue coloured from glacial silt and wide, braided and undergoing extremes of flow.

Molesworth Station is New Zealand’s largest farm. This huge trackless area features many small alpine tarns and lakes and its western and southern boundary is the Clarence River – one of New Zealand’s longest and more remote catchments that drain the Inland and Seaward Kaikouras. The lower Clarence and the Awatere Rivers flowing northeast from Molesworth are heavily silt laden for much of the year.

Completing the circle of the region we finish in the Marlborough Sounds main catchment, the Pelorus Valley. Beginning in the Richmond ranges between Nelson and Marlborough, this river gouges its way through steep native bush covered mountains to slow down to a gentle pace in lush dairy farm land before entering the sea at Havelock.