Casey's Blog

18 January, 2010

 

I took out my first client of the New Zealand season after spending six months in Chile and Argentina, Neil, of the UK.  We headed to the Secret Stream (see my photo galleries page for the slide show:http://tempuri.org/tempuri.html or larger format here: http:////picasaweb.google.com/WildAngler.com/SecretStream#.)  This little jewel is in the Central South Island, a little over two hours north of Dunedin.  The river is often extremely clear.  It fishes best early and late in the season, or after a fresh.  I like it at three cumecs or so, as the higher water, particularly  early in the season, can trigger neat hatches like those of the green stonefly,  Stenoperla prasina.

Adult Stenoperla prasina, taken from a Central South Island fly fishing stream.

 Casey's Greenstoner Nymph.

Neil and I walked a little over an hour up a steeply sided gorge where there is no proper trail before we started fishing.  We saw good fish in every pool, some up to eight pounds.  It was a beautiful, clear day, a classic day of New Zealand sight fishing.  The fishing was good, but the catching was hard.  We were fishing on a Monday, and I suspect locals might have targeted the water the day before.  Neil is a good angler, and has landed many large Atlantic salmon in Scotland.  He gave it a valiant effort, but because he hadn't mastered a double-haul technique, the fish often were spooked when he made multiple back casts.  I cannot emphasize enough the importance of making a single backcast low and hard and being able to get your line out with minimal rod flash when you are fishing to large, wild trout.  Every backcast you make reduces your chance of fooling theses wild South Island trout in clear smooth water by 20-30 percent.  We must have seen 20 good trout, up to 8 pounds.  Many were lying either in the tail of the pool, or just off to the size, where you'd almost surely spook them if you didn't walk like David Carradine in the old "Kung Fu" series when the monk instructs him to walk as though trying to cross rice paper without tearing it.

25 Jan. 2010

 

I fished the Pomahaka River high up in the watershed with Keith Mitchell, president of Dunedin's fly fishing club, Fly Fishers and Stream Bashers.  We targeted a section he'd fished many years before in a "Trophy Trout" video produced by his friend, Bruce Masson.  On the way up we ran into Robbie McFee, who'd also appeared in the excellent video.  He and an Australian friend had been fishing the river for the last four days and were landing three to four fish in the three to six pound size.

 

Keith Mitchell, president of Otago Fly Flingers and Stream Bashers, on the Pomahaka River.

"Target areas with either deep pools or large rocks," Robbie advised, though he cagily didn't recommend specific beats.  "A lot of the old pools we used to fish are now full of gravel, and the big residents and sea-runs, for which the river is famous, like the cover of big dark rocks."  Any pool with a bottom structure with rocks the size of bowling balls or larger is good.

 

Robbie's recommendation is a sound one.

 

Keith and I walked up through Chinaman’s Gorge.  Immediately we saw a pod of five or six sea-runs, but they were very spooky and ghosted away upstream and disappeared near ledges.  Later that morning I saw one resident taking duns off the surface.  I tried a variety of flies-- CDC emergers, Parachute Adams of various sizes, with and without droppers--but this fish too quit feeding.  Though the day was beautiful, the fishing once again, was hard.

 

Later in the season I think we'll try the section near Parasol Creek.

 

3 Feb. 2010

 

Scouting for a party of four Aussie's due in the next few days, I headed to the top of a Southland river famous for some of the largest resident brown trout in New Zealand. 

No, despite the fact that the river has minor fame, I'm not going to name it.   Too many people already know about it.  The river is highly prized not just as a destination of local and international anglers, but it's also a place South Island fly fishing guides like to go on their days off, for their own sense of challenge.  The fish here can be as hard as they come.  The river has been subject of much discussion in the last year because Fish and Game New Zealand supported granting a Water Conservation order on it, the highest level of protection offered to New Zealand rivers, like the one granted the legendary Mataura River back in the nineties.

Because large fish invariably attract other anglers, you need to walk a couple of hours to get into less pressured trout, which is fine by me. It makes the day a bit of a pilgrimage.  Despite miles of fishable water, however, I sometimes see Queenstown fly fishing guides targeting jaded trout right next to the car park.  Why, I don't know.

For those of you who might like to guess this river's name, I'll provide a few clues.  (Email me and the first to get it right wins a couple of my favorite fly patterns. )  It flows through an open, tussock-covered valley in a lovely parklike setting.  Some anglers have compared the sense of spaciousness and brown animal hills here to the Serengeti.  The river is small to medium in size this high up, as clear as green tinted air, and the fish average 6.5 lbs, according to Fish and Game New Zealand statistics.  I've broken off several fish over ten pounds here, seen real monsters here almost twice that size, and last year had a client land a 8.75 fish we presented to for 45 minutes before it took.  Friends and I hook and land several nice fish that size or bigger each season.  Some fish are real alligators as long as your leg.  They are so well conditioned they have a humpback.  Some have sea lice on them, but many are residents, too.  The exact relationship between the residents and sea-run trout isn't known completely and warrants further study.  Thank goodness for now the river is free of dams.  By the way, the support for the Water Conservation order was overwhelmingly in favor, and the river's supporters all describe their experiences on it with an air of spirituality that borders on the religious.

But a handful of people and the Federated Farmers, the lobby group for industrial agriculture, opposed the application for a Water Conservation order.  They argued for the right to divert water or excavate gravel or build dams in the future.  I understand any man or woman's need to make a living for their families, but such a short-sighted approach to land use isn't sustainable and would rob future generations of a unique international treasure forever.   Wild trout such as these are increasingly rare in a world that keeps getting smaller.  All studies say wild trout need gravel and unmodified rivers to spawn and to follow food.  Dams would prevent their seasonal movement, of course, and diverting any water would wreck one of the finest fly fishing rivers in New Zealand and thus the world.  I suppose you could tear down the Sistine Chapel and use it for firewood once, but it would be about as sustainable. 

 

Anyway.  Because I got a late start someone was already on the beat below me, so I needed to walk for two hours before I started fishing upstream.  I left a note on my car about my intentions and gave the other angler a wide birth, walking well away from the river.

 

After a two-hour hike, I was ready to start fishing when I spotted a truck, despite the fact that you aren't supposed to bring vehicles in.  The two anglers were pleasant however.  One of them used to work for the New Zealand Department of Conservation, and that's how he'd procured keys to the closed gate.  They invited me to fish with them but I kept going downstream.  By then I was really sweating as the day was warm.

 

I fished upstream for two hours and spooked a couple of fine trout.  Then I neared the river's confluence with a tributary and saw a translucent brown football shape  just off a shelf that cut the pool diagonally from right to left.  It was a magnificent trout holding stationary in bouldery water.  I tried a variety of flies, but the fish moved upstream incrementally, not exactly spooked but getting there.  I changed from a cicada to a manuka beetle to an emerger with no take.  Then I rested the fish and changed tactics.  On the fifth cast with a cream caddis larvae, which I call my "Wedding Dress" caddis because it's off-white, the fish took.  It was so strong I was sure I foul hooked it in the tail.   But after chasing it downstream a hundred metres and coaxing it gently for 20 minutes, I managed to land the fish.   I was pleased to see the scale registered 9 pounds.  Thank goodness for Rio Fluoroflex tippet, so tough yet limp it's worth its weight in gold.

A fine specimen of a South Island, New Zealand brown trout. 

It was near dusk, so I started the long walk back to the car.  Four and half hours walking for one fish, but what a fish.

6-8 Feb. 2010

Mid Summer: low, warm water and hard fish

Guided Peter and his friends Matt and Nick and Pete for three days.

Peter and Matt are accomplished anglers from Australia, but they've made a dozen or more trips to New Zealand in as many years and have fished some of New Zealand's best fly fishing waters and fly fishing guides, from the North Island's Rangitikei and Tongariro and Mohaka and Nguroro  to the South Island's McKenzie Country.  This was their first time this far south, and I looked forward to guiding them on some of Southland's finest fly fishing rivers.  But I warned them the water conditions had neared drought level in some parts of the South Island, and rivers were low and clear.  Still, they were game for a big day out.   And the challenge was doable.  So we headed to the trophy river.  Pete and Nick fly fished the Mataura river below Mataura township and had a pretty good day.

Peter and Matt and I strung rods early and headed upstream to my favorite section.  The walk usually takes an hour and a half or a little more, depending on the clients' level of fitness, but Peter runs marathons and is tall and fit, and Matt was no slouch either.  We arrived at the hallowed water in record time.   Peter and Matt are both fine casters, and Matt's eyes are as sharp as almost any South Island fly fishing guide I know, so it was a pleasurable day of good company and South Island sight fishing at its best.

Almost immediately upon arrival, while Peter and Matt fished a riffle below, I spotted a lovely brown feeding where it usually does, hard up against the left upstream cutbank.  The fish likes the cutbank because the structure offers a hide and a food current in the same place.  The brown appeared to be sipping mayfly duns or emergers.

When sight fishing with a partner on small clear water, it's important to work out a system where everyone gets a turn.  Some folks take turns based on time, like say a half-hour or 45 minutes.  Others prefer to rotate to each sighted fish or each fish hooked or landed.  Peter and Matt have fished together for years and work water like a well-oiled hunter-gatherer machine.

Peter was first up.  Looking upstream, the fish was feeding within six inches of the left bank.  Matt and I crouched down in the tussock and Peter crossed the tail of the pool quietly, disguising his movement in the whitenoise of the fast water.  He moved slowly and carefully into casting position and first tried a CDC upright, one of my favorite conservative patterns for easily spooked fish:

Casey's CDC Upright--an excellent pattern for the Mataura and other hatch-driven rivers with Deleatidium mayflies.

Despite the fact that the big brown trout was feeding on mayflies, it wouldn't take Peter's offering.  Peter presented carefully a couple of times, and whether his cast was off by a few inches or had micro-drag or for whatever reason, the trout ceased feeding.  At this point I could feel my bloodpressure rise.  

Sometimes it's good in moments like these to slow down and think.  We were in the middle of the South Island's fly fishing season, and terrestrials had been out for a while, cicadas and hoppers and green manuka beetles, to name a few.  A lot of South Island fly fishing guides love to throw a cicada during this time because it's the proverbial cheeseburger, a big piece of meaty protein, but I reasoned the fish may have seen a few cicada imitations in the past weeks, so I opted for a pattern that has been good to me the last few seasons,  my Green Manuka beetle, which imitates Pyronta festiva.   I tie it with iridescent Locofoam back, brown hackle for stability, and an abdomen made of brown hare's ear and Glister brown dubbing.  I've tinkered with the design for the past five years, at first with a peacock thorax and no post.  But in recent seasons I've added a stark while Z-lon post and an excellent material new to me, by the Czech fly fishing material company Hend's.  It's called body quill.  It is synthetic and durable and translucent.  Not only does it match the color of the body of mayflies, but also the translucency of their legs.  Translucency is everything in a fly.  I use the Hend's Body Quill  on mayflies and terrestrials with great success.  (The material is available at Allan Miller's Hunting and Fishing stores, and if they're out, call Grant at the Dunedin branch and he'll order you some.  Ask for color number 22, sold in New Zealand under the name Dad's Favorite.)

Casey's Manuka Beetle.  Casts well, and the crinkly Hend's Body Quill  legs makes it easy for the trout to see, and the post stands out like testicles on a bulldog to aid sight fishing.

Peter put a couple of casts off to the right of the fish.  Then he took a deep breath and fired a beautiful shot hard up against the bank and just upstream.  It made a nice plop, just as a natural would falling in.   Sometimes you immediately have a good feeling when you see a nice cast, and this was one of those moments.  The big brown took.  The moment seems frozen in time for me still, and I can remember the hair on the back of my neck going up.  Fish on!

Matt and I were both excited.  But Peter kept his cool, keeping the rod bent nicely, ocassionally lowering it horizontal to the surface to maximize sidestrain and torque and changing sides every now and then to throw the fish off balance.  Browns are often territorial and frequently don't want to leave a pool they know, unlike big rainbows that will rocket a couple of hundred metres downstream.  In the clear water we didn't realize how big the fish was until he pulled it to the surface the first time.  When he finally landed it it measured nine pounds in my weigh net, Peter's largest brown to date.

If Peter will send me a photo, I'll put it up soon.  Otherwise you'll have to wait til I can figure out how to load up video.

Next it was Matt's turn.  We spotted another fish in the run above, and he hooked it on a Gingerman nymph.

My Gingerman nymph.  Note Hend's Body Quill legs.  Good imitation when Deleatidium and Zephlebia nymphs are active on South Island rivers.

Matt soon brought his fish to hand, and it was another nice brown of a little over six pounds.

We rounded the corner and came up on one of my favorite stretches, where native beach trees hug the downstream left and the river deepens around their roots.  On some days in the shallows on that side trout often hang in what looks like a weird diagonal to the river's flow, but in reality there is a slight gravel shelf there.  Some anglers often skip the shallow gut, but most trips I find two to three fish there.  This time we saw a couple of shapes that looked to be just that.  Peter probed the fast shallow riffles with the manuka beetle and again hooked up.  The fish gave him a spirited showing and proved to be another strong brown of just over six pounds.  My how gratifying it is to hook a nice trout on a dry fly in fast water.

We had lunch and watched fish in a deep pool then tried unsuccessfully to tempt them.  We walked a long way upstream and spent the rest of the day testing our eyesight on the clear water.  Every time we saw something ambiguous, we treated it as a trout, and almost every time it was.  Then the water warmed up and the fish got hard.  We saw a lot more fish and covered them all, but they seem to develop lockjaw, particularly the ones that were dark.

As spawning time was still a few months off, we were unsure as to why some of the fish were dark.  Were they older fish past their prime?  Or had they been caught and released and thus darkened up from stress?  If anyone out there has a theory, I'd like to hear it.

We spotted a lot of fish the rest of the day, but possibly due to the clear sky and sun and warmer water, they weren't interested in our offerings, and we tried a variety of flies, from nymphs to manuka beetles to streamers.

We reached the end of the beat near dark and then walked back to the car.  By the time I dropped them off it was close to midnight, and we were all beat, but three magnificent South Island browns were landed.  Not large numbers, but the size more than compensated.