I am sitting here in my house in Lumsden watching it sleet outside on day three of the 2009 -2010 New Zealand fishing season. I haven’t been sitting here on my arse today – in fact I have been for a bit of a drive – headed towards the storm to get under the leading edge of the front and escape the very strong winds and spent a bit of time exploring a spring creek – I didn’t take the rod, just had a walk and a nosy and found some nice trout then decided to come home via a few different spots to see what the water was doing after all the rain, sleet and snow (which is still going) to help choose in my decision making for tomorrow’s river.
Another Nice Southland Brown Trout New Zealand
Back to day one of the season, due to the nasty weather that was coming in I decided to abandon my first call spot and revert to plan B. We were out on the water early – in fact we pulled up at our designated place at 0530 to give us a very good shot at not being beaten to the water. To our dismay 2 vehicles were already there but after a wee bit of investigation we realized that they had come in the evening before and walked downstream and camped the night planning on fishing back up to their vehicles. This was a poor display by these cretens as this particular area prohibits camping and you are not allowed to get on the water from the parking area until 0500 – pricks! At least the ranger got their plates – I am sure they will get an infringement notice.
Plan B was altered slightly and we decided to head upstream instead. – sweet. Another set of (for want of a better word) wankas drove past us while we were setting our gear up at day break – never stopped to say gidday, discuss plans and options and promptly parked up the road about 1km (giving us only 2kms of fishing water) and walked across to the river and started fishing. This kind of behavior is very poor and most definitely not good fishing etiquette in the South Island of NZ.
Well with clear clam conditions and 2kms of available water untouched water I chose to get the 3 piece 5 wt bamboo rod out for the day and proceeded to hook and land 5 lovely big brown trout. My good buddy enjoyed his fishing but with a string of gear failures resulting in 4 lost in decided to toss (in the rubbish bag) the nylon he had just bought the day prior and use some airflo fluorocarbon sightfree G3 (5lb) and straight away got onto another good fish and this time all the gear held and he was a happy NZ angler. If it wasn’t for the gear failures in this short stretch of water we would have had 10 big brown trout to the bank. All the fish we landed were in reasonable condition for early season ( an easy late winter/early spring) but they need to get stuck into putting on weight from now on.
Nice Early season NZ Southern Brown trout
Day 2 arrived with high winds and shitty weather inbound so we drove into a spot intending on fishing a very small creek (a good long jumper could easily get across) for the day. Unfortunately the weather had already affected the water clarity so we again went to plan B. A long walk upstream on the main river through rain sleet and snow spotting and prospecting as we went. We only saw one fish which we promptly hooked and had to the bank but we really enjoyed a beautiful walk – it looks like in this system the fish have already dropped back due to the relatively low water levels for this time of the season. I will be investigating lower down on this over the next few days me thinks.
Keep reading — will be more coming.
I can’t tell you how much I appreciated everything you did to make my fishing trip unforgettable. That trophy brown was totally unbelievable! Frankly, I’m surprised we were able to land him. That was one of the longest fights I’ve ever had with a fish. Fighting that trout and the river current was a whole new experience for me. Your advice and help were invaluable. I will definitely call you the next time I get to New Zealand. And I really enjoyed your website article and photo. Thanks again for putting me in position to catch the fish of a lifetime. And it was almost a few fish of a lifetime. All in all…brilliant!!!
