WARM WINTER WANDER

Today we took Floyd out for a ramble around the countryside. The Rangitumau Valley is typical of the Wairarapa with soft glowing hills framed by the beautiful snow kissed Tararua Mountain Range. We sauntered up James Road and met two elderly people out for a walk. They looked like they had seen a good 80 years each. She was aided by a walking stick and sir was on a sturdy push bike. Sir was a visitor from Wellington who had arrived on the train.

He chuckled as he explained his good fortune at being able to come over on the train for free on his gold card and the fact that his friends had looked after him as it was a terrrible weather on the day of his arrival in the Wairarapa but he only had to bike for 7km before he was picked up!

Today there was not a cloud in the sky and Floyd set out with a no nonsense spring in his step and his eye bright and ears pricked up for interesting things on our journey.It was a lovely ride. The top picture is of our place tucked under the ridge between Kopuaranga and Rangitumau. The big silver shed.The bottom pic is of the fine view of James Road from on top of Floyd.

ENDANGERED????!!???

Well this comes as a bit of a surprise , apparently long finned eels are endangered and someone is all frothy because you can buy them in down town Auckland. Well if DOC wants to take a look at a healthy and thriving population then they should have a look see in our backyard.

(Good looking eel huh ... shame about the chick!)

The river is swarming with them We speared one and caught approx 15 more in the fyke net on New Years eve. . We kept four in total.

Now this might sound a lot but its not. We get a feed of eels about three times a year. And thats the way its going to stay. While we think the river is pretty healthy - we reckon its too small to sustain a commercial harvest. however we would be interested to find out if indeed it is fished commercially.

Some were large as witnessed by this picture but there are also many many small ones.

We just want to know how DOC has come to the conclusion that they are endangered?

big fish -

captured this in the Kopuaranga river in the wairarapa - it was midday, warm and barely a ripple on the river in a deep hole. the trout was lazily rising to feed .. far to pretty to eat ( maybe)