One Wanganui whitebait fisher camps beside her favourite creek for weeks every year in pursuit of the tiny delicacy.
The whitebait season begins on Friday and finishes on November 30, and Glad Stoneman is getting ready. Friday will just be a day trip for her, but she has to be out on the first day.
She's been whitebaiting since childhood. There was a frustrating gap when she owned businesses and couldn't go, but for the last 12 years she's been out in all weathers and three years ago caught 40kg of the native fish.
"Everybody caught whitebait that year - up the river, Whangaehu, Turakina and a huge haul down in the South Island."
Last year she only got 5kg, and she blamed the dry autumn and winter. This year is looking better. Mrs Stoneman takes her pop-top camper down to a Wanganui creek and stays there for the last two months of the season. She wouldn't give a name to her special spot.
"I would be hung, drawn and quartered if I told you. There's quite a little community that comes each year."
The others are mainly retired, and one couple aims to earn enough to pay their rates bill. There are also unemployed people and one particular man who, if he has a job, always gives it up for the whitebaiting season.
Mrs Stoneman's grandchildren stay at the beach with her in the holidays, and she knows which of them will carry on after she's gone.
"For some it's just a novelty, but there are two in particular that are good keen little whitebaiters."
She was the first to start camping by her creek, and now others join her. At first people thought she was mad.
"I camped through some horrendous weather, and once I was frightened that the pop-top might get picked up and blown."
But she has some creature comforts. Her husband brings her a cooked meal every night, and she shoots home every few days for a shower. She eats her whitebait in a fritter with a bit of finely chopped onion, or dredged in flour and stir fried in butter.
When she was a child her grandfather harvested kerosene tins of whitebait in the Manukau harbour. There were so many that he fed them to his chooks. Now there are fewer, and she always throws the young eels in the mix back into the stream.
"If you don't have eels, you don't have a stream."
Mrs Stoneman likes to set her net in the three hours before a high tide, but said opinions varied.
" ... some people will say it's better on a morning or midday tide, a new moon or a full moon. Some people will not even come down on a full moon."