I was lucky enough to recently join two of NZ’s top fly fishermen for a little time in the back country of my home land New Zealand.
We fished the Mataura river not far out of Queenstown. For those of you that haven’t been fly fishing before all I can say is if you get the chance to go with someone with a lot of experience, jump at the chance. Aside from walking the rivers edge in a special part of the world and of course catching a fish or 3, if your lucky, like I was you will get to experience so much more…
I crew up salt water fishing that I love but for the most part its not a visual sport the way fly fishing is. My expert guides seemed to have the vision of a hawk. They would point out fish under the surface that took me minutes to faintly see. Spotting the fish was just the first part, you then have the art of casting your line. You need to land your tiny fly slightly upstream of the identified fish. Trust me that is easier said than done but lets just for a moment suggest you nailed it and the fly was presented beautifully for the fish… Go you little beauty I was thinking. Eat that fly… time and time again by guides Yoshi and Kyle from Totally Fly fishing in Auckland did this only to see the fish take little or not interest. Back the fly would come, the guys would quickly change to another fly and cast again,,, still nothing…
Mmmm me thinks this is not easy. I am with some of the best anglers in the world and we still aren’t catching fish, fish we can see. I couldn’t add any value or suggestion to these experts as to how these poor results might improve. What I could do is suggest we crack open the hip flash of lovely single malt scotch… if all else fails… drink… ;>) That will change our luck I suggested. Kyle joined me in a lovely wee dram and suggested as we were sampling some lovely Scottish necter that this was good. Yoshi had gone ahead, he seemed to go quiet, he seemed more focused. Kyle suggested this was a good thing, he's pissed he hadn’t been landing more fish, Kyle suggested he will hook up now… Just as he said this and we walked around a bend in the river to see Yoshi running through the water, rod bent chasing the fish on the end of his line. I will let the below images tell the rest of the story…
All I can say is if an opportunity like this ever comes your way, even if you aren’t a fisherman or women get involved, it’s a great day out.
Oh yeah forgot to mention the science of fishing didn’t stop after that fish. Yoshi promptly removed the stomach of the fish and found out what the fish had been eating. A particular bug… That was the Ah-hah moment, Fly’s were changed to match that bug and its was game on, the next fish took it first pass :>)
