From the Editor - Whitebait

I won't be eating any whitebait this season that I'm not 100 per cent sure where it came from.

That's because of the warning out this week - the Canterbury District Health Board says whitebait from the Avon and Heathcote Rivers will be so contaminated they'll cause "months of explosive diarrhoea'' if you eat them.

Bugger that!

But you'd have to be out of your mind to even dip your toe into the Avon or Heathcote, let alone try and catch the whitebait.

A shame really, because as a young lad, my mates and I would head to the Avon with our whitebait nets and try our luck.

For some reason we never got much; we always to seemed to be there on the wrong day. We'd hear great stories of shoals running and pounds being caught. But not when we were there.

Stories of great feasts of whitebait patties and money being made by selling bucket loads to local fish and chip shops. We always dipped out on both accounts.

The only memorable thing I remember from my relatively short and unsuccessful whitebaiting days was almost getting sucked into a drain on the Avon.

My mate Mike and I had set our net across the drain that runs underneath the entrance to the rowing clubs at Kerrs Reach.

It wasn't allowed but we hadn't been getting any whitebait. We figured when the whitebait came through the drain the only place for them to go was into our net. We just had to be quick before the rangers, who patrolled the river banks, came by.

But as the tide came in, the water funnelled towards both entrances to the drain, and fairly quickly.

It caught us by surprise. The net began to twist and turn under the pressure and it was obvious it was going to disappear into the drain if we didn't grab it.

Stupidly, and without thinking we went into the river to save the net.

I can still remember the force of the chest deep water push us into the drain's concrete support. From the angle I could see inside the drain and it was filling fast from both ends.

It didn't take a rocket scientist to work out that if we went into that drain there was no way we were coming out the other end.

I don't recall how, but we got out of the river and also salvaged the net. And here's another crazy whitebaiting yarn.

Last week we were told by one of the city's civic authorities the Avon and Heathcote Rivers were clear and okay to whitebait.

We printed that in our suburban publications - we've had concerned calls ever since.

The day after, the warning from the health board came out saying silt in the rivers was badly contaminated which was infecting whitebait making them dangerous to eat. It could cause "explosive diarrhoea for months.''

I know which advice I'm taking!