Fishing report for the North Canterbury Region Thursday 24th December 2020

Hello and welcome to the North Canterbury region fishing report. 

Christmas day and the rest of the weekend are looking wet, wet, wet. 

A low-pressure system to the East is going to bring rain for 3-4 days over Canterbury starting on Thursday. 

While not ideal for the holidays, it is some much-needed rain especially for the plains. 

Lowland streams could do with a top up to prevent drying over the Christmas holidays.

High country lakes, like Lake Georgina (pictured above) have been fishing well recently. 

Fish have been active on the surface during the warmer days. 

Lots of changeable weather has meant the lakes have been well oxygenated and have a reasonably cool water temperature. 

This will help keep the fish feeding more actively on the surface and edges. 

The cooler weather coming this weekend will also help prolong this feeding activity.

Thursday will bring some North West rain to the Canterbury headwaters. 

This is expected to make the main alpine rivers dirty, but this shouldn’t last long as the rivers have been low recently. 

Salmon anglers should be looking to target fresh salmon entering the rivers early next week. 

Cooler temperatures and a fresh in the river will mean some ideal conditions.

Back country fisheries will clear quickly after the rain on Thursday. 

The back country will be cloudy with some rain/showers right through to Sunday. 

Once the North West passes on Thursday there will not be much wind in the back country. 

So, although it might be a bit colder and wetter you will not have gale force winds to contend with.

The cloudy conditions will make spotting fish difficult so likely water should be fished blind. 

Otherwise targets rivers with gorges or backdrops to get better visibility.

Salmon Heads

This season North Canterbury Fish & Game are looking to see which of our rivers have significant “spring run” salmon entering and improve our understanding of how these early run salmon contribute to the fishery and angler harvest.

For this to be successful, we need anglers who catch a salmon in November or December in any of the North Canterbury rivers to record the date, location caught, length (from nose tip to the fork in the tail), weight (if possible), sex, fin-clipped or not, as well as keep the head with pectoral fins attached, stored in their freezer to be analysed by Fish & Game.

A $200 tackle voucher will be drawn from each river for information collected (one entry for each head returned).

Please contact Fish & Game (03) 366 9191 to arrange pick-up of these heads.

Tight lines & Merry Christmas

Tony Hawker, North Canterbury Fish and Game Officer