High Country Fishing Season Kicks Off With Biggest Competition Turnout Since 2019

Photo above: Charlie Hofmeester (left) and Terry Austin (right) with a couple of solid rainbow trout caught from kayaks on Lake Grasmere on opening morning. Photo Credit: Peter Meecham

Saturday, for many New Zealanders, was a day of electoral tension and political pain. For Canterbury’s angling community, however, it was mostly one of good fishing.

Canterbury's High Country freshwater sports fishing season began on Saturday, and North Canterbury Fish & Game’s 18^th annual fishing competition served as its rousing North Canterbury welcome. By first light on Saturday morning, hours before the election kick-off, people were already out and enjoying the High Country Lakes area, many of them camping and making a weekend of it.

Terry Austin, of Rolleston, is marking his tenth year of camping and fishing at Lake Grasmere. For Austin, opening day serves to show just how dedicated Canterbury’s fishing community is; ‘Sometimes you meet the same people… you might not know their names, but you recognise them as being here [every] opening.'

By midday, over at Lake Coleridge, the queue is already long at Fish & Game’s weigh-in tent. The weather has turned, in true Canterbury fashion, from mild and sunny to rainy and chill, but the show goes on nevertheless. A sausage sizzle is in full swing, anglers of all ages mill about in their jackets and Crocs, and the atmosphere is cheerful.

Anglers line up outside the North Canterbury Fish & Game tent during the Lake Coleridge fishing competition. Photo Credit: Peter Meecham

Chris ‘Buddah’ Aldous, a long-time Fish & Game Honorary Ranger, says wryly that he keeps coming back ‘because I’m told to,’ which gets a good laugh. ‘It just brings everybody together, one time of the year, coming out for the hiking and fishing,’ he says, sobering up. ‘We’ve got a great team. It’s a chance to show what Fish & Game’s all about.’

Harry Graham-Samson, a North Canterbury Fish & Game officer, has been on the task of checking fishing licences rather than being out on the water himself. Still, he says, it’s a great turnout, with lots of boats out on Lake Coleridge and an excellent harvest of salmon this opening. Over 200 anglers are attending the prize-giving, which fellow officer Jackson Meecham says is the biggest turnout the annual event has had since the 2019 competition.

A group of young anglers come up to report that they've caught and released a tagged trout, one of many that Fish & Game are tracking as part of their environmental efforts. Meecham is looking forward to seeing the data continue to roll in as North Canterbury Fish & Game reach the seven-month mark on the project aimed at seeing whether the Lake Coleridge trout have made it into the headwaters of the Harper and Avoca Rivers to spawn, as well as providing excellent recapture data with insights on population growth and movements. 

Read more about this project here: https://www.thepress.co.nz/nz-news/361021828/wild-fish-north-canterbury-lake-tagged-first-time-bid-track-migration

Barbara Talbot-King wades into the shallows of Lake Grasmere to cast to cruising trout on the opening morning. Photo Credit: Peter Meecham.

For many at the competition, fishing is for more than just the catch (as great as that may be). 'We receive all of our annual funding from our licence holders… [so] we try and do as much as we can for anglers to improve their experience, so they can continue to enjoy getting out there and doing the sports that they love,' Meecham says. 'A study conducted by Fish & Game in conjunction with the University of Otago that came out in late 2025 discussed correlation between mental health and fishing… and it's actually a really positive thing for people's mental health, getting out there to renaturalise yourself.'

After a period of eager anticipation, the spot prizes are drawn, and the results of the weigh-in come through. The champion fish for each category weighed in at 4.17 lb for brown trout, 3.94 lb for rainbow trout and 1.71 lb for chinook salmon.

Sadly, after the ceremony, it’s time for most attendees to pack up their gear and drive back out to the real world, where votes are being tallied, and Aotearoa is waiting with bated breath for the results. It’s only the first day of the season, though, and there’s still many months to come back out, meet old friends and new, and do what this passionate community loves most—get out there and catch some fish.

In terms of harvest, Aldous says there’s no way to tell how this season will turn out. Nonetheless, it’s clearly gotten off to a roaring start.

 

Article Author: Sylivie Yee