Well I am sitting here on a beautiful day here at home, wishing the sun wasn’t beating down upon us with such intensity so that I could take off to the river to chase some big brown trout in arguably some of the finest fly fishing rivers in the world. As is the want of keen fishermen, when you can’t go out there and do it, you sure as hell will talk about it, and that is why I have decided to start a “blog” type thread here to share my adventures, good and bad, successful or not. An insight into my nights on the banks of the local rivers here in Southland.
I’ll recount my nights thus far, starting with the New Years camping trip and getting us up-to-date so I can just add one night at a time when the memories are fresh.
December 30, Mavora lakes, Mararoa River
After a 90 minute drive from home into some of the most pristine high country in New Zealand. I set up the tent for my wife and the kids, went for a short walk up the lake shore, and just enjoyed the serenity of a nice calm night next to the unspoilt Lake Mavora. After dinner I decided to go and try out one of the new fishing rods I had purchased the day before, a $80 Kilwell/Shimano spin set which I had bought for the young fella. I wandered down the the Mararoa River which joins the two lakes, a crystal clear stretch of water with beech forest right to the banks. As such taking the brand spanking new Fly Rod wasn’t an option.
Now it has to be said that the waters of the Mararoa are crystal clear, as in regardless of the light conditions you can see the bottom of the river all the way down. Therefore sneaking up on the trout is just about a practice in futility as far as I’m concerned, although the hardcore fisherman will swear it’s the only way to catch them.
It also has to be said, I didn’t fancy my chances of catching anything at all, in fact I even went as far as promising a fish I didn’t think I’d catch to the nice American couple at the campsite next to ours. Mainly I just wanted to put my sons new rod through it’s paces and get the line worn in so it didn’t tangle as much when the boy came with me.
Nevertheless, I attached a yellow Thunderbug to the swivel, and proceeded to get my line wet. Third cast, tangle. Fifth cast, tangle. Ninth cast, tangle and swearing. Time to go for a walk. I decided that the mouth of the river from the lake was not a good place, probably due to the inordinate number of tangled lines, so I was to cross the river and follow it down the opposite bank for a bit and see what I could find. I had never been fishing here before so I had no idea where I was going, I think that just added to the excitement.
About 300m down from the swing bridge I found a nice grassy bank where it would seem the river floods occasionally. With no trees on this bank I was also tempted to go and get the fly rod, but I figured by the time I got back to the tent it would be far to dark to go back to the river. The river here is about 10 meters wide, and quite deep and fast flowing, I just knew there had to be a few hungry trout hiding down there. I started my chase above some rapids where the river splits in two for a short distance, after a couple of minutes another fisherman started attacking the other fork in the river. We briefly exchanged pleasantries – as you do when you meet a person of your ilk – and he quickly informed me that he caught a couple of nice rainbows the previous night when conditions were “better than they are tonight”. Well sir, thanks a fucking lot for dashing what little hope I had of living up to a seemingly empty promise. Nevermind, I was going to give this new rod a thrashing and that’s all there was to it now.
I started moving down the river, the fork on my side was shallow and fast, there was now way I could have kept the lure off the bottom without it being on top of the water, so I carried on down to where the river came together again. It was the type of rejoining that is written about in fishing books where some old pro (read: rich fella who doesn’t need to work anymore and can travel where ever he wants to go fishing) tells us normal folk the secrets of the 10% who always catch something (10% who have more time than the rest of us more like it). The shallow rapid flowing back into the deep channel, the trout are supposed to hide in the deeper part and gorge themselves on anything that comes over the edge from the shallow rapid. I was in the perfect spot to attack this area, I’d cast upstream and retrieve the lure back through the deep pool hopefully enticing a nice sized trout to dinner. After an hour of nothing at that spot I figured there was just nothing there, I hadn’t had a chase, nibble, bite, just nothing.
Again I headed downstream, this time to the end of the grassy bank where a small backflow cuts you off from the beech forest. I figured I’d start here, and fish my way back upstream as far as I could before calling it a night. So I started sending the Thunderbug back out into the crystal waters of the Mararoa to test the rod and reel out, I could cast pretty much straight downstream with the breeze behind me, and retrieve straight back into the current putting a decent amount of strain on the line. To be honest, I had no idea if this workout was doing anything, but it seemed like a good idea at the time. A couple more then I’ll start moving back up stream, and then it all happened.
A flash of silver, a tug on the line, a strike from myself, and there he rose … well jumped like a fish with a hook in his mouth to be more precise. I then realised that the drag on the reel was almost non-existent and the trout was going where ever he wanted without expending any energy, so I tightened that up until the line started to feel some weight. I dropped my fishing bag and net behind me, this will end up being a dumb idea later, but at the time freed me up to get through the tussocks if needed. Then the fight was on. He would dive deep, and I would wait, I would reel him in while he got some energy back, and then he would dive deep again. All I could think about was “I hope I’m remembering this right”. It had been about 12 years since I last caught a trout. Fortunately the trout on the end of the line must have been hungry, cause he was well and truly hooked, this most likely saved me from loosing him. So after about 3 minutes I have him close enough to the bank to net him, this is where the dumb idea hits me, I’m now about 10 meters from the net, I figure if I keep the line tight I can guide him downstream back to the net. So that’s what I do, unfortunately as soon as his head faces downstream hes off again, ahhh fuck it, I’ll let him go and, keep him on the line, and get back to the net and bring him in again. Fortunately, when I start bringing him in now I have the net he doesn’t have as much fight left in him and I pretty much just bring him straight up to the bank, and on about the sixth attempt, I get him in the net. I have just caught my first fish in a dozen years in one of the most beautiful parts of the world, and to add to the grandeur of the whole scene, the trout is a legal 3 pound rainbow!
