Last year, I visited New Zealand for the first time and experienced a lot. The fishing was great, we saw some huge fish, and I got my first taste of what it is to regularly fish to mid 20’s and occasionally 30” trout. In thinking about the trip after I left though, one thing I knew I wanted to do next time was do it on my own. On the initial trip, my guide did not like fishing dries, insisted that everything must be directly upstream, and that the client can’t go more than 10 feet from the guide without the guide saying stop walking so he could get ahead of you, with all of it being generally a bit controlling. In the same way an angler gets satisfaction by fooling a fish on a fly they tied themselves, I wanted to do this trip by myself from finding the rivers, spotting the fish, and ultimately fooling them. So I made sure to do it different on round 2
I booked my flight for round two to New Zealand this past June and started preparing. I looked hard on maps at areas I had fished the first trip, and started to look for daily stretches to cover since boats are not effective in covering water for the sparsely scattered and very spooky trout that are found there. Admittedly, I was a bit nervous my memory would fail me in returning, but I was excited for the challenge. Fly wise, I kept it simple as I found the bug life to be relatively limited and simple to imitate in terms of patterns with caddis larve and other simple nymphs, along with general attractor dries and terrestrials being enough to cover the bases. My fishing partner and I also rented two 4wd SUV’s to ensure we could access the more off the beaten path rivers and locations and save ourselves the walk back to the car after a long day of covering water and climbing higher ground to spot and locate fish.
Upon arriving to NZ, I was happy that memory kicked in as we got our rental cars without issue and exited the airport. I was already driving on the other side of the road so if I didn’t know where I was going that could have been a problem. We drove approximately 150km (or 70 miles) to the town we secured lodging in and made our home base for the trip. Dropping my bags on the floor of the hotel room was a relief- we were here with no problems. Now we just needed to find the fish.
Over the next few days of fishing, we learned a lot when it came to selecting the rivers we fished based on the conditions we had. In NZ, you are essentially flats fishing for trout. By that, I mean you have to look into the water and spot the fish before you make a cast, because there are only 100-200 trout per mile on most rivers and fishing blind on rivers that have miles of good water is like trying to find a needle in a haystack. Add in the fact that the fish are extremely spooky, and blind casting does more harm than good. Understanding this, conditions mattered since on sunny days you have better visibility and with that better ability to spot fish. These are the days that you fish larger rivers, or water where big fish are found but difficult to spot. You use the good days to chase the best fish. On the cloudy days, you try and be strategic and fish water where the river bottom/water color is easier to see into, or where you are more likely to find a few rising fish to help you find where the fish are. If you fish a good river on a bad day for visibility, those fish are spooked and you wont see many fish on that stretch for several days even if you didn’t touch a fish on the prior day you made the wrong decision to fish that piece of water. It is truly insane how even a day of pressure can impact the fishing on a stretch of river for days, regardless of success on that given day. And it is extremely odd to be upset as a trout fisherman that you have clouds or rain during a fishing day.
Overall, I feel like we made some good decisions during the trip on what days we fished certain rivers. Dry fly bailed us out on several cloudy days that we were given with 14-16 caddis patterns getting it done for us in a few quality pools on certain rivers that held a good amount of fish in the 22-26” range. When it came to the dries, I also acted on the urge to try and present dry flies by way of a downstream presentation similar to what is common on many technical U.S. tailwaters and found it was very possible though getting in position took a lot longer than on your typical U.S. tailwater. Once you saw a rise, you would have to get out of the stream, and 25-50 yards into the bushes away from the stream, and walk well above the fish with an average set up requiring a 60-70 foot cast downstream to the trout with a 15 foot+ leader. That said, if they didn’t spook by the time you let the cast go, you were likely to get that fish to eat within a drift or two. And the fish were big.
In the evening, through spreading our time around we were also able to find some areas where the fish would rise well for a condensed, but intense evening rise for the last 30 min-1hr of the day. These were some of the most exciting but challenging moments we experienced as the fish were large and seemingly appeared out of nowhere in rivers that were gin clear and appeared to have no fish when we first arrived to gin clear pools that later held several upper 20’s fish. Most nights, we were able to fool atleast one, with my best night being 4 eats and two big fish to the net. With both our day time, and evening fishing, seeing a fish was the first step, with the second critical step being the decision of where to cast from. Sometimes this required going back downstream, crossing the river, going into the bushes, and then walking 100 yards up river to get in position on the opposite bank and well upstream of the fish. Sometimes this meant taking tippy toe steps down a bank for 10-15 minutes and getting behind a bush where you could take a cast or two closely behind the fish hoping he took before noticing you. Position was everything, and on several occasions making the wrong approach cost us the fish without even getting a cast to several actively feeding fish in the 8-10 lb. range which hurt. But we converted at a higher percentage as we continued fishing, and the challenge of approaching the fish, and presenting the fly without spooking them became a real thrill.
When the fish weren’t willing to rise and take a dry, presenting a nymph was not any easier. Small to mid-sized nymphs weighted with tungsten beads were the go to patterns, but the real challenge was detecting the eat. Many times, the fish ate and the sensitive yarn indy never even moved. The body language of the fish told us the fish ate, and several fish hooked in these situations confirmed the fish were taking the fly despite the fact our indy had not even flinched regardless of being very accurate in terms of depth to the fish. It was as technical as dry fly fishing for any dry fly snob rolling their eyes at the idea of NZ sight nymphing, if not harder because of what I have eluded to above.
Overall, I was proud of how we took on the challenge and did on our first DIY NZ adventure. I landed around 2-3 fish a day which is not bad by NZ standards, and some very quality fish as well. More importantly however, I left with a high level of satisfaction that we had done it ourselves. Anyone can have a guide row a boat or walk them to a fish that has been spotted for them with nothing left to do but make the cast. We mapped out the days, got onto some very off the beaten path stretches that had not been hit much, or at all that season, and took many of our fish on dries which is not all that common in NZ in the month of December. If anything else, it gave me the confidence to do it again and confirmed it was possible. And yes, I’m not just talking about it, but will be doing it again next year.
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