Xmas Fly Fishing New Zealand

T’was the week before Xmas and all the anglers are wondering what Santa might put in the sack for them. In my case Santa came early (for practical reasons) it delivered me a new line. The Airflo Ridge Clear 6wf. This as the name suggests,  is a clear line and has been designed to fool fish in gin clear lake edge water or situations where you will only get one cast at a fish in moving water.  I have had it out a couple of times and it has certainly proved its worth both on the lake edge and in gin clear streams with it helping to catch some very spooky trout.

New Zealand Fly Fishing Expeditions

The lake edge fishing is the easy part as mending does not really come into the game but on moving water you really have to think a bit before throwing that cast as when the line is in moving water it is almost impossible to see and hence mending is rather difficult. Study the water flow and use the appropriate aerial mend such as the wiggle, reach or curve cast to make sure that you don’t actually have to mend the line on the water. Watch the fish carefully and hit him at the right time depending on what gear you are throwing at him.

New Zealand Fly Fishing Expeditions

Now for me this reel and line will live in my guiding pack and come out when or where required, it only takes a minute to swap over to it when you need it. A valuable tool in the arsenal to fool more fish. Ask Santa nicely and he might come through!

Over the last few days we have seen some bloody good rainfalls which have freshened some rivers and turned other into raging torrents. I just spoke to one of my helicopter pilots and his words were “perfect storm”. On the divide and catchments close to there have been 300+ mm of rainfall so pretty much anything west is out for now, they will drop and clean quickly when the rain stops.  A great example of this is the Dart River which went to a bit over 1200 cumecs but has dropped by half since it hit the high point yesterday The further east you go the rivers have seen less rain and have been nicely freshed up which is great news for  the Xams/New Year anglers.

As soon as the weather fines up again and we start to get the heat watch out for the cicadas, they will be around and things will hot up on that front over the next month.

The lowland rivers are seeing plenty of willow grub action so make sure you have some fine tippet and long supple leaders and your grub pattern ready to go.

Here’s a video shot on a remote back country stream doing things a little differently!