Being a somewhat kept man, I'm not usually alowed out too much after the 6:00pm curfew, but last night was a notable exception. After attending to a work related call at about 8:30pm, I decided it was high time to have a bit of a look at how the small streams in the area go at night. It was a bit of a pleasant suprise.
I managed to hook up two or three fish in the Twizel and land one while there was still daylight. When it finally got dark at about 10:00, I snuck over to a spring fed stream that always runs a lot colder than the Twizel, and predominantly holds Browns . The stream had literally come to life. A somewhat monster hatch of mayflies was underway, keeping the air thick with flying things.
A mate of mine who I do a bit of rabbit shooting with reckons that for every rabbit you see, you've walked past 6. After last nights display of trout numbers after dark, it would be fair to say the same thing about trout. Whenever I visit this stretch, I usually only spot a fish or two. A momentary pause as I approached a long slow moving run in the stream revealed an almost constant sound of 'plop'...'plop' as fish sipped insect after insect out of the surface film all up and down the run.
The Moon was at that kind-of fingernail phase, so there wasn't much light at all. There was just enough to reveal the ever increasing rings of each rise nearby, but spotting where the size 12 Dad's Favourite fly landed or drifted was nothing but informed guesswork.
The next hour and a half was spent casting to the vicinity of a recent rise, and watching/listening for a take somewhere close to where I thought the fly might be. This was kind of tricky, as there were always other fish, sometimes right by my feet ditracting me as they grabbed something off the surface.
I must have missed about twelve to fifteen takes (due to the guesswork) and hooked up positively about seven times. Only 3 fish came to the net, as there is no shortage of submerged obstacles along the deep sided banks for the wily browns to wrap a tippet around. Each of the fish that I landed were in pretty good condition, and were full of determination not to be netted. They didn't tend to run too far up or downstream, but whenever they came close to the net, put in a burst of pace back into the middle of the stream before settling down again.
It was about 11:00 when Sarah dropped me a text message telling me I was a naughty boy for staying out so late. Despite having a fiesty trout on the end of the leader, I replied that 'I'd be home soon, and that txting one-handed with out losing a fish is a bit tricky....gotta go'
After landing and returning the fish to the water, I snuck home to bed to find Sarah fast asleep.
The intensity of the hatch was a bit of a suprise, as was the number of fish in the streams that normally you just don't see during daylight hours. I reckon that a change in curfew might be in order over the next few weeks......
