Scary stuff re insect numbers...

[Johnno]

Don’t think we are immune
We are not.
Thanks to land usage, climate change etc, the freshwater insect numbers have also dropped alarmingly in NZ as well.

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/anim ... line::rid=

[Steve]

'huge swarms of up to 80 billion individuals' - now that's quite a hatch, imagine trying to attract the attention of a fish with all of those about!

[Johnno]

In 45 years fishing only once, back in the late 90s have I ever fished a hatch so big that you couldn’t see your fly with all the flies on the water. It was amazing. In all those years I think I have seen only maybe 6 big hatches, but that one occasion, one wild wet HB afternoon, was out of the bag.

[Dave]

Fish & Game Southland carried out some research on the Otapiri Stream. This stream was considered a fine trout fishing stream but that is no longer the case.
The published paper on the research is here https://www.researchgate.net/publicatio ... ew_Zealand
The mayflies, caddis and trout are gone.
Dave

[Kiwioz]

I have fished the Otapiri on and off for the last 20 years as part of a suite of Southland "meadow streams" that never seemed to attract much attention from other anglers. The decline of the Otapiri has accelerated in the last 10 years. Visiting a former favorite stretch last November in hope it may have recovered revealed a stream with little flylife when searching under rocks and a riverbed which seemed covered in a choking blackish slime which never seemed present in former years. My concern is the decline is symptomatic a rapid decline in lowland Southland streams which once provided mayfly fishing to equal the Mataura. It is no coincidence as the study reports that this decline correlates to the massive increase in intensive agriculture and dairy farming. Another valley I have fished over this period is now almost completely now converted from sheep to dairy and is in a decline similar to the Otapiri. Staggering how quickly poor agricultural practice impacts the ecology of these streams.

Kiwioz