New Zealand Trout Fishing

As on our first trip down under, I managed to succumb to some sort of flu-like virus just as we were to begin fishing. Never-the-less I rose to the occasion, medicated by my talented wife and urged on by Barry, who was of the opinion that a long walk and some spicy home-made venison sausage would cure anything.

The first day we fished the Maruia River with notable lack of success (There are four syllables in that six letter name!). We saw about ten fish (which Barry considers about par) but only one was feeding. It rose to my fly, but veered off at the last moment and took something else nearby. Thinking mostly of the pain in my gut, I really didn't care all that much.

The next day and for several of the following days we fished the Upper Gray River. Our first foray onto this river involved a long walk through a field and then along the top of this bluff till we could find a way down to the river. Once down into the river valley, we found the river to be open in a few places as shown here, but generally it was heavily enveloped in 'bush' that made walking something of a challenge. There were many times when a machete would have helped.

This photo of Jennifer casting to a brown trout shows the more typical shoreline of the Upper Gray. It also shows the water and rock coloration that gives the river it's name. Again we saw ten or more fish each day and many of them were quite large, but for the most part they were not feeding, and our efforts generally only served to scare them away.

There were a few notable exceptions. I was beginning to feel a little better and on our first day on the Gray I managed to get into a mild disagreement with Barry over fishing methods. I didn't like his barbed flies: he didn't like the braided loop on the end of my line: I didn't like his use of nymphs, droppers, and indicators. We were not off to a good start. I really only like to fish the dry fly, and that's all Jennifer and I practice. Our disagreement grew a little more heated at a time when he had her casting a dry and a dropper. She was having problems making a good presentation, and I was not happy that he hadn't first tried a dry on the shallow lying fish. The fish they were after didn't take so Barry started upstream in search of another. Since they hadn't spooked the fish I waded in and tied on a small royal red humpy (I managed to use up about fifteen of these on this trip).

As luck would have it, the fish took on the first drift, and I let out a shout to make sure Barry took note of my success. The nice brown took off downstream, jumped once, then settled down to hang in the current while I applied some pressure. Barry rushed back only to discover that his net had pulled off somewhere back in the bush. I played the fish for about five minutes and was working it over toward the shore just as he returned with the net. Flushed with triumph I eased the fish over toward him only to have it turn and streak back toward midstream. And this is where my triumph ends. The shrink fit braided loop (the same one that Barry had tried to get me to change) slipped off the end of my nice new Lazer Line (my anger immediately shifted to the Madison River Fishing Company who had installed it on the new line at my request). I looked at Barry and said, "Well, that's one for the guide!" He rushed out into the river and hugged me, and after that we had no problem finding a middle ground.

We had no further action until about mid-afternoon when Jennifer enticed a nice brown out of his shallow lie with an elk hair caddis. This fish also took off downstream with Barry and Jennifer racing after it along the rocky shallows. Staying upright during these chases is not easy, and one surely welcomes the steady support of an athletic guide. Things went well for a while and the fish began to tire, but then it made another run across the river and turned downstream on the far side of a big rock. Barry saw the danger immediately and took off across the river, reaching the line just in time to flip it over the rock and getting quite wet in the process.

The picture tells the story. According to Barry's scale, this was a 6 1/4 pound trout: the biggest either of us had ever caught, and the first fish either of us had landed on this trip. Jennifer had the family record from our previous trip with a 5 pound rainbow so I saw my bragging rights flying away for several more years.

We were on the Upper Gray on three different days, but managed to land only a couple of fish. The tropical cyclone that blew through the north island and dropped the bottom out of the barometer may have had something to do with it, since we saw only a few actively feeding fish. There were plenty of fish hugging the bottom and most considerably larger than I had seen elsewhere in NZ, but generally they were in deep water such as this pool known as the aquarium where Jennifer got this picture of me casting to one that wasn't the least bit interested.

I missed a couple of opportunities, one of which is burned into my memory. Barry had spotted two large browns feeding on the surface on opposite sides of a large submerged rock in mid stream. The bank was engulfed in trees and brush, and the water was deep all around, but I managed to get into a semi-stable position behind them on another large submerged rock. The fish were cruising around, and for some reason I could not seem to get the fly to land where they were going to be. The fish looked huge to me and in my excitement I couldn't even manage a good cast during the moments when they were still. Finally, I got the fly to land just ahead of one of the fish and it rose to intercept the drifting fly. I could see it drifting back directly under the fly, slowly closing on it, and I knew one had to use a delayed strike with these large fish, but I managed to miss the connection anyway. Only later did I realize that to keep this fish on I would have had to leave my nice rock and wade/swim after it in what looked to be chest deep water. From that point on I kept my pocket camera in a zip lock bag.

The picture on the right was taken with a polaroid lens and shows a fairly obvious trout holding in shallow water. There are a couple of tricks to seeing these fish: their fins make their outlines less sharp than those of the surround rocks, and they often cast a shadow. The water flow here is from right to left and the sun is off to the right.

One of the two largest trout I've ever seen in a river was at the bottom of a deep pool on the Upper Gray. Barry didn't mention the pool by name, but I think Impossible Pool would be an apt choice. This picture shows the huge trout holding near the bottom of the six to eight feet deep pool. Perfect spot for a weighted nymph you say? Well think again, because the water flow into this pool was channeled right down to the bottom by some boulders about twenty feet upstream, so that in the pool itself the flow was up from the bottom like an underwater fountain! The big fish alway command the best lies.

When tramping through near inpenetrable bush behind Barry, one of his favorite expressions is "There's a wee track here." Best I can tell this means he's found a path made by animals or flightless birds of some dimunitive size. In one of her talks with Jennifer, Ali had related part of her history with Barry, and in their early days together it seems that he had lead them far astray when supposedly on a well used trail to a place called Sharpton Falls. During one of our attempts to move through a particularly dense combination of bush and swamp alongside the Upper Gray, Barry called back to say he was sorry but "There's no track at all here." Jennifer called back, "Does the name Sharpton Falls mean anything to you?" and got back the response "I'm going to kill that woman!" Later he told us the whole story which is indeed funny, especially if you didn't live through it.

On our last day, Jennifer decided to stay in the lodge and read, so I went back to the Maruia alone with Barry. The barometer was going back up and about half of the fish we saw were feeding. Still, only a few were looking at the surface, and I couldn't get any of them to actually take a fly. Generally these were big fish of over five pounds, and I find that whatever talent I may have seems to vanish when I'm faced with fish of that size. The situtation wasn't helped by the fact that these fish were in particularly difficult places: slow water back eddies with the fish facing down river were particularly popular. I put a good first cast right over one monster in such a lie, and it drifted up to my almost stationary fly, slowly looked it over from inches away, turned, and left the area.

Late in the day, we found a fish facing upstream and feeding in shallow water right up against a steep bank about five feet below a pasture. It was about a half mile upstream from this picture, but the area looked very similar. I went down to the water's edge and on the first cast put a humpy in exactly the right spot: up against the bank and about six feet ahead of the fish. It rose and looked but didn't take. Barry suggested I put on a parachute adams and make the exact same cast. I tied on the fly (another task that gets significantly harder in the vicinity of a large trout) and managed to repeat the cast exactly. This time the fish took without hesitation, realized its mistake, and headed out for midstream. I scrambled up the bank with Barry's helping hand. The level pasture made it easy to follow the fish downstream. It looked to be a really long fish, and I was sure I had beaten Jennifer's record, but when finally brought to the net it turned out to be only 5 3/4 pounds. It's amazing how quickly your standards get revised upward.

My total for two days on the Maruia was one strike, one hooked, and one landed. The fish are there, they're big, and I'm sure there are times when they arn't quite so cautious.

It's particularly nice not to have to worry about poison ivy, snakes, or any of the other North American hazards, but New Zealand's tiny sand flies do their best to even things out. For this area and indeed along most rivers, it's a good idea to have light cotton gloves to protect your hands and to remain generally covered up. The flies can't bite through even the thinest of clothing, but they'll find every bit of exposed skin and after the first few good bites most people become quite sensitized and have a lot of itching. Insect repellent is only marginally effective.

All in all, we only landed three fish during our stay at Western Rivers, but we must have seen fifty or more large trout, a few of which were true monsters. Despite these poor statistics, we really enjoyed the lodge and plan to go back on the next trip. Barry is an excellent host and guide (despite his preference for nymphs, indicators, and barbed hooks), and Ali provided us with cheerful conversation and wonderful meals.

Jennifer had decided to skip fishing for most of this week and to instead explore the surrounding towns and the Abel Tasman National Park. Mick had arranged for a local fellow, David Pike, to be my guide for the week. We got along well from the start although David sets a fast pace that had me exhausted at the end of each day. It was a good feeling however, and despite the good food I managed to lose eight pounds in three weeks.

The easiest fishing was in the Motueka River that runs just across the road from the lodge. It's a beautiful river that runs through the neat landscape of the pretty and varied farms that fill this fertile valley. The fish in this river run from three to five pounds but tend toward the smaller sizes. They make up for it in relative abundance, and I typically brought five fish to the net each day.

The picture shows one of the most memorable fish I caught in this river. He was feeding voraciously in about a foot of water over the narrow ledge that you see running right behind me in the picture. The ledge runs off to the right about 30 feet and is overhung with willows along it's entire length. It required a cast back along my left side with the rod nearly parallel with the water to flip the dry fly in under the willows. I muffed the first two or three casts, but I was being cautious so they didn't reach the fish, and it continued to feed. Finally I found the rhythm and got the leader to straighten out just to the left of the fish. It took instantly, then dove off the ledge into six feet deep water where I managed to tire him without much problem. A nice four pound brown from a challenging location.

David took me to the Baton river one day where we had a lively morning and a nothing afternoon. It was on this river that I caught my first New Zealand fish while blind casting. This standard technique on U. S. rivers will only rarely take a fish in New Zealand because they are so few and far between and so easily spooked. Still this one was lying in some obvious water along a shaded bank under some high overhanging trees. We couldn't see into the shadows but my first 'what the heck' cast produced a nice long drift and a fish!

On two days we went to the Wangapeka River. The first day was golden. David took me to a deep slow moving pool first thing in the morning, and we didn't leave it till after lunch. In between I got two of the cruising fish to take a dry fly, and abandoned my principles to take a third reluctant one on a nymph. The picture shows the largest fish. A click on the picture will get you an enlarged image, or if you'd rather just look at the fish click here. And I discovered again that brown trout can jump. Several of the browns left the water on this trip, but one from this pool startled me by jumping clear of the water four times right in front of me when I had it on a short line.

There were several other good memories from this day. I got a second fish to rise to a blind cast into fast water. David said it looked like a good spot, and although it looked to be too fast to me, I cast anyway. Naturally, when the fish slashed up from the bottom to take my fly I wasn't prepared and missed it entirely. Another surface feeding fish ignored a dozen casts with humpies, parachute adams, and elk hair caddis while I tried to get the perfect drift right over its head: lazy big browns don't like to move very far for a little fly you know. Finally, in desperation, I put on a very realistic Voljc-Moser dry caddis I had tied from a pattern in Oliver Edward's book. I'd tried this fly a couple of times before without any success. My first cast was way off to the right by at least six feet, but the 'lazy' trout zipped across and took it before I had a chance to pick up the line and try again. Naturally I missed the strike. Something about being mentally prepared I guess.

I've included a picture here of a log perched atop a large boulder. It was a low water period on all the rivers we fished, but this one had clearly had some serious high water in the past.

My second day on the Wangapeka was good in a different way even though we were rained out at noon after taking only one fish. About mid-morning, David found a nice fish in one of the most typical brown trout feeding lies: right at the apex of the V of water between the shore and a swift current. I couldn't see the fish from my position downstream, but David pronounced it to be a "good" fish and he was not prone to overstatement. I got in position and cast, but again I landed the small red humpy several feet to the right of the fish toward the faster current. The fish turned to the right, took the fly, and I got a good hook-up. But being half turned already, the fish continued around and came directly toward my feet. I held the rod as high as possible and stripped like mad, not quite fast enough, but the hook stayed in place. The fish went a few feet past me then turned and raced across the fast water into deeper and slower water in mid stream. And I do mean raced! I felt the loose line burn through my fingers as the slack disappeared in an instant, and when I had him on my reel it started to sing at a pitch well above any I've heard before. David shouted "Look out for the rock!" I said "What rock?" but lifted my rod tip even higher. The fish must have felt it because it turned upstream again about thirty feet across the river and kicked in the reserves, boosted the pitch of my reel toward the inaudible, and parted my 5X tippet through sheer acceleration. This all happened in less than five seconds, and I never saw the fish, but I would sure like to meet it again.

Despite the good fishing in the local rivers, the high point of our trip was a helicopter foray across the Arthur Mountains and into the Karamea River valley. Jennifer abandoned her sight seeing and came along for this special adventure. We got under way about eight in the morning. The helicopter is owned and operated by a fellow who lives a little way down the river, and you can just barely hear it take off on it's short trip up to the lodge. A few minutes later it circled in and landed in a small field next to Mick's vineyards. We got aboard quickly and were immediately away up the Motueka valley toward the mountains. It was clear and sunny until we reached the top of the mountains where we were greeted by a sea of morning cloud on the eastern side.

That's when you're glad to be with an experienced pilot who knows the landscape. We just cleared the ridge and immediately saw the upper end of a valley where the clouds didn't quite meet up with the tree tops along the ridge. Our pilot banked and in an instant we were throught the opening, underneath the cloud, and flying down a river valley toward its junction with the east flowing Karamea. About ten minutes later the helicopter touched down on a rocky flat, we quickly unbuckled and climbed out, and it was away leaving us in a rugged rock strewn river bed surrounded by thick bush on both banks. David immediately struck off upstream looking for fish while we assembled the rods.

It wasn't long before he located a fish and the fun began. I got the first hook-up, but I immediately lost my footing, my state of dryness, and the fish.

The photo shows Jennifer playing a nice fish that has run downstream from the upper pool where she caught it. This picture shows the typical shoreline of the Karamea. The rocky banks extend right up to the thick brush along the high water edge and make walking extremely difficult. But walk you must to get from one fish to the next. We covered a couple of miles of this with only a few gravelly spots where we weren't continually climbing over one rock after the other. Some of the submerged rocks were covered in an ice slick slime that equated a moments loss of concentration to a fall. By the end of the day we were exhausted but unbroken, in no small part due to the fact that I had stumbled across a nice walking stick discarded by some other trekker.

I don't remember if this is the fish being played in the previous photo, or another one she caught. All of the fish we landed were five pounds and up and differed not so much in length as in condition and coloration.The fact that there are lots of rocks in both photos doesn't mean much. I do remember that she landed the first fish and gave my male ego one more bruise. She's a good sport about it however, and was acting very embarrassed. If you click on this photo you'll get an enlarged picture of the fish and not the whole picture.

Except for one or two bead heads in the deeper pools, we were fishing dry flies since it was clear the fish were feeding well and willing to come up. They seemed to have a preference for royal red humpies with dark backs: size 12 in the faster water and 14 and 16 in the calmer and shallower lies. Occasionally we would switch off to a yellow or green or a parachute adams, but whenever we saw a bigger fish we usually fell back on the red humpy. Usually this meant we were going to lose another humpy, because in these rocks you're doing pretty well to land every third fish that takes the fly. We did better in the pools were the fish were usually content to just sink into deeper water, but in the faster and shallower water the big ones usually managed to drag the 4X or 5X leaders across a rock.

I got my turn as the day wore on and managed to get this one to rise out of the upper end of a long deep pool. There were usually several fish in these pools, but they were far out, usually out of Jennifer's range. In the lower three-quarters of the pool they were generally cruising around, giving me lots of opportunities but few strikes. The ones I caught were usually lying near the head of the pool in the best feeding lanes. Just in case you're not tired of looking a big trout pictures I've included an enlargement of this six pound trout.

We hit a long dry spell after a late lunch and it looked like our fishing was over for the day. We gritted our teeth, supported each other, and relied more and more on the walking stick as we picked our way over or around boulder after boulder in an effort to keep up with David. We passed some nice easy water, but it happened that a group of half a dozen hikers were on the other bank. You don't like meeting other people when you've paid big bucks to fly into a wilderness, but I'm pretty sure that after walking into wilderness for several days they liked meeting us even less. Everyone smiled and waved and none of them were fishing, but they were at the head of the good water and it had emptied of fish.

The day was nearing an end, and I still hadn't managed to land one big enough to beat Jennifer's first fish on the Gray. I had about written off my chances and was not particularly thrilled when we stopped at another big deep pool. But after some fruitless attempts at cruising fish, we noticed a nice brown feeding right at the head of the pool. The center of the river was blocked by a large rock with about half of the flow coming around the far side and the other half around our side and over a broad shallow shelf before emptying into our side of the pool at a sudden drop off.

The fish was feeding at the top end of our side, right behind the rock and turned sideways to us. We couldn't get close to the fish without being seen, so there was no choice but to make a really long cast and hope for the best. Naturally, I was out of small red humpies and this fish blithely ignored everything that I floated over it. There was a medium size brown mayfly about and that's clearly what the fish was feeding on, but that's what had been around for two weeks of fishing and I had almost nothing left that resembled it. I had two size 12 red humpies left, but they had been repeatedly rejected by fish in slow water.

Finally, I noticed a single somewhat beaten up Rio Grande Trude. Hmmm, red bottom and brown hackle. On about the third try I got a perfect cast up into the shallow water so that the fly would drift right into the trout's feeding lane. I lost track of the fly in the afternoon glare, but saw that the fish had moved and reacted to David's cry of "strike" and we were away. This was clearly a big fish, and I was determined to be super careful. It ran to the far side of the pool about fifty feet away from where I was standing, but didn't dive for the rocks on the bottom. My only real worry was the sharp ledge right in front of me. I carefully worked the reluctant fish back across the pool and into the shallow water only to have it get it's head down and run back across to the far bank. Somewhere along the way Jennifer got this picture of him starting on another run back into the deep water. We repeated this operation three or four times as the afternoon slipped away till finally I was able to get him head up in the shallow water.

Finally we got him in the net and David's scale registered 6 1/2 pounds. My ego was saved by 1/4 pound. Now if we could just get out of here without Jennifer landing a bigger one.

A short distance above this pool we both got another opportunity. Two fish were feeding in a broad section of fast water. The water wasn't particularly deep and the fish were essentially side by side in the river, one near the shore and the other near the middle of the river about fifteen feet away.

Jennifer cast first to the one nearest the shore. We were both about worn out by this time and our casting was getting pretty ragged, but after several tries she managed to land a fly just ahead of the fish and off to the side. It took immediately and was clearly a bigger than average fish. But it elected to run straight downstream right at her. She lifted the rod tip, found an overhanging tree branch, fumbled a bit, and the fish was off and racing downstream.

The other fish had ignored the whole episode and was still feeding so I waded out to mid stream. With great concentration I finally managed to land the fly just ahead of the trout and it rose to suck it down. This fish first ran upstream, more or less over to where the other fish had been and remained there for several seconds. It began to move around the pool, but was being very cooperative about not seeking the rocks, and it was clearly beginning to tire. I knew we were running out of time. The helicopter wasn't due for another thirty minutes, but we were supposed to be at a clearing nearly a mile further upstream.

I got the fish head up and onto its side a couple of times but it wouldn't come to David's net. We couldn't help but notice that this was the brightest and prettiest fish we had seen all day. It's sides were a beautifully bright yellow-gold that flashed in the afternoon sun every time it turned. I had it on a short line, rod high and only leader out the tip of my rod, and was thinking how nice the photograph was going to look when it saw an opening in the rocks and bolted downstream. I felt my leader drag across an unseen rock, and the next instant it was gone, and our time was up.

We were immensely relieved to discover that only a short distance upstream we could get away from the river and onto the Leslie Karamea Track, a hiking trail that runs from the west coast to a parking area overlooking the Motueka valley. The trail was fairly open forest floor so we made fairly good time even in our state of near exhaustion. David went on ahead in case the helicopter arrived before we did. The relatively easy walking revived us and we soon arrived at a small clearing outside one of the many huts that the government maintains along these walking tracks.

Our helicopter arrived about ten minutes later and in less than half an hour we were back at the Motueka Lodge where Mick's wife and partner Fiona met us with a coke for me and an iced tea for Jennifer. I think we are putting her in our wills. Of course that won't do any good if I get my way, because we're going to spend it all going back to New Zealand.

All in all, in about ten days fishing we caught and released twenty five brown trout averaging about four pounds each. With two or three exceptions they were all taken on dry flies.