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Fishing guides are excited to welcome back international anglers this season after two years of the border being closed.
The fresh water fishing season starts tomorrow and it's expected to be busy as it's not often opening day falls on a Saturday.
Fish and Game expects to sell 100,000 fishing licenses this year - about 10 percent of them to international tourists.
That's good news for fishing guides, some of which lost all of their business overnight when the borders shut due to Covid.
Martin Langlands from Troutlands Guiding Service in Canterbury said it had been a tough few years but bookings for this season were already looking good.
"The season's looking really good, especially from a guiding perspective I'm just so relieved the borders are open because i've had a lot of international bookings coming through, I think most guides around the country have.
"People have been pent up for to long, they're ready to get out and explore our beautiful country."
Langlands said before Covid his business was mostly international anglers but he had to adapt over the last two seasons.
He said this year he has a good mix of 60 percent international and 40 percent domestic anglers.
"I have lots of bookings from Australia and some coming from Norway, Sweden, The UK and US."
The Professional Fishing Guides Association has about 150 licensed members, mostly catering to overseas clients.
Its chair Craig Smith who runs fishing tours from Wānaka said bookings were not back to pre-Covid levels but they were increasing.
"There's a lot of hope around this season, people are more positive, it's not back to pre-Covid but good bookings will help guides recover from two bad seasons.
"The border being open is great but also having the traffic light system gone really shows we are open for business."
The main group of international anglers would come from Australia which was normal but in the last couple of weeks the association had noticed an uptick in bookings from the US, Smith said.
"Speaking to some of the lodges up near Nelson Lakes, they're all fully booked which is great, the thing is people don't just come here to fish they stay on and do other activities which is great for the economy."
