While my actual salmon fishing for the 1995-96 stopped with me finally having employment in what was meant to be a reliving casual position, it turned out to be mostly night shifts that left not enough time to fish. However I then started to get short term contracts. Filling in while other social workers took well deserved annual leave gave me days off but the salmon season was finished. That gave me a chance to move on to the 4th stage of my salmon addiction, “Learning about the salmon fishery”.
This started with looking for written information. Most up until now had come from fishing magazines such as Fish & Game, which then came out bimonthly, but the one I got the most salmon information from was Allen Burgess' South Island-published Southern Fishing and Boating. Every month I had to get my hands on the latest copy and was very sorry when Allen could no longer publish, because of cost. The best book I found was New Zealand Freshwater Fishes, by R M McDowall, a great reference book. I was however looking for the actual fishing experience and helpful fishing techniques that could help my addiction. Then I found 2 books; “Salmon Country”, by Jack Byrne, published 1980, and the book that has been my main reference on salmon, “In Search of Silver”, by Ross Millichamp. This was not published until 1997, by which time I had several long discussions with Ross about some of my ideas and stuff around salmon. Some were “WRONG” and Ross helped me change them, when meeting him on the river – he was at that time on the staff of North Canterbury Fish and Game, and later went on to become the manager. He later did a rewrite of this book that was published 2013 and is even better. However I felt needed hands-on observational stuff and to this end, started looking for the Silverstream Hatchery I had heard about.
The then National government was selling the NIWA Glenariffe
