The local rivers are predominantly holding rainbow trout, some of which are still spawning, espiecally early in the morning. Condition of most of these trout has not been great, however all of that baby making seems to work up a bit of an appetite, as they tend to be holdiing in fairly open shallow water chomping through as many aquatic insects as they can find.
All of this sounds like the fishing is easy pickings, however due to the relatively low flows and clear water in our smaller local streams, these fish are almost as easily spooked as in mid summer, the difference being that they are holding in more visible locations.
In the Mackenzie Country, the mornings are still producing some light frosts, and with the lions' share of my outings starting and finishing in the wee small hours, I havn't seen much dry fly action yet. Most of the fish caught over the last 2 1/2 weeks have been caught on small weighted pheasant tail or a weighted Hare & Copper nymph pattern.
The local Twizel river has been producing plenty of fish, however due to it's close proximity to town it appears to be getting a bit of a hammering and fish numbers in the middle reaches are dropping rapidly. Another factor which influences this river is the rainbow trouts' tendency to run upstream to spawn, and then drop back down into the lake as spring moves into summer.
One of the joys of fishing these small streams like the Fraser and the Twizel is the close proximity to the trout when casting and also attempting to land the fish. Caleb and I spotted one reasonable brown on our most recentt outing, holding in the lee of a small willow outcrop, making use of the slack flow to move up and down the water column, voraciously taking any sub-surface morsel that happend to drift past. After tying on a size 14 Hare and Copper nymph, we moved to within about 12 feet of the fish, flicked the offering just upstream and watched the trout move into the flow and take the hook. As has been said so many times about New Zealand trout, hooking up is not catching a fish, it just provides the opportunity to open negotiations. This 1-2 kg fish was no exception and after wrestling with the line in one spot for a few seconds, he tore off downstream, narrowly missing my cold legs, and then came charging back up the other side of me. No sooner had I mended all of my line in, and stripped it back out on the way downstream. This was repeated again as he came back up, pass both times within about a meter of the angler. From this point the battle was rather short lived as he wasted no time in ploughing into the overhanging willow outcrop, snared the line on an underwater branch, and pulled free.
Perserverance brings results though, and 10 minutes later a slightly smaller yet similarly fiesty fish made our net.
If all trout were easy to catch, I'm sure that we wouldn't be kept interested for long. We certainly tend to think longer and harder about lifes losses than lifes wins.
Sam Dunn displays one for the dinner table on the upper Ohau River
