The season wound up yesterday, and while there has been the odd good spot, for most it has been a season to forget.
For Neville Henderson, watching and trying to see whitebait from his stand at the top of the catching area at Titiroa Stream in Southland, there were few highlights.
"Very patchy. We started off all right but then the rain came and never went away. We would get a few, but nothing to write home about," he said earlier this month.
The rain had muddied the waters and led to a strong current in the stream. That had led to the whitebait — not the most powerful of fish — struggling to get too far upstream.
The stream had stands littered from the top of the catchment area to Toetoes Harbour.
Marty Tautari has a stand much closer to Toetoes Harbour and was not complaining.
Earlier this month he caught 14kg in one day, and had similar-sized catches over the season. Being nearer the estuary undoubtedly helped.
A few hundred metres as the bird flies from Titiroa Stream there are just as many stands on the much bigger Mataura River — prime whitebaiting country.
But it has been all doom and gloom on that waterway.
It started very well. One whitebaiter said on day one, on September 1, they bagged close to 22kg. The following day, they went out and it started raining in the afternoon, and seemingly never stopped.
The rive rose, flooded, the water got dirty and no whitebait passed by. It had been one of the worst — if not the worst — season anyone could remember on the Mataura River.
Further north John Dale, of Mosgiel, said it had not been a great season on the Taieri River at Henley.
All up he had caught about 11kg of the delicacy, which was less than half of what was normally caught in a season. Poor weather leading to dirty water had hindered fishing and he said there was virtually no-one on the river yesterday.
He liked his whitebait cooked in a pattie by his friend Heather, but there had not been too many of them.
Department of Conservation biodiversity ranger Benjamin Davies said anecdotally, numbers of returning whitebait have been lower across the board this season compared with previous years. This was probably due, in part, to the poor fishing conditions.
The Clutha River had a few clear days early in the season but for the most part had been dirty.
Rivers north of Dunedin up to the Waitaki have also been dirty at times from rain, but these waterways typically clear faster due to smaller catchments.