The most enchanting moment fly fishing, I think, is the take. It's the instant that you spend sometimes hours anticipating, and is the culmination of all of the 'hard' parts of fly fishing. it is certainly the most enjoyable part of the fishing experience for me. When you miss the take and whip the fly out of the quarry’s mouth, the air turns blue with frustration, but when you get it right, it's all on for young and old.
Being the birthday boy last Monday, I took they afternoon off, and tickled down to the Ahuriri river with my wife, Sarah. The day was stunning, with hardly any wind and picture perfect blue skies. Fishing the river surrounded by lupins, at the feet of the clay cliffs was an opportunity to catch fish in a postcard.
The Ahuriri is a highly regarded river, noted especially for it's high stocks of Rainbow Trout. we had a quick lunch at the clay cliffs, and then left Sarah with her novel under the shade of a willow tree and went for a fish. two hours and 400 meters of river later, I had not seen a single fish. Considering that the day before I had spotted a trout feeding 50 meters downstream out of the corner of my eye while supervising the kids swimming, I was feeling pretty disappointed with my fish spotting ability.
Disillusioned with blindly thrashing the water with a Royal Wulff - Beaded Pheasant Tail combo, I was about to call it quits for the day when a young nose poked out of the water just upstream. I quickly removed the nymph from the combo and (quite deftly, I might add) presented the Royal Wulff just upstream of the target. Not too often do I get a take on the first cast, but the day started to come right. The barely visible green back whirled downstream as the dry floated past, and her snout magically appeared and sipped down the fly. First time round, I missed the hook-up, possibly being a bit quick to strike, but the youngster returned to her position, and kept feeding, unconcerned about the fly which escaped. two casts later, she
turned and followed, sucking the size 12 down enthusiastically. Determined to not make the same mistake twice, I waited until she turned upstream before setting the hook.....and the game was on.
One of the factors that make the Ahuriri an exciting river to fish is that the river is relatively large (by new Zealand standards), and once a hard fighting rainbow get's into the main flow of the river, they have an awful lot of energy working to help the fish and the fly part company. This particular 1-1.5 pounder didn't delay in doing just that, and bolted from her feeding station at the rivers edge, right in to the middle of the river. Instead of the expected acrobatics display. I'm pretty sure that what happened next involved a snag of some description, possibly a large rock. The young fish lodged itself on the bottom of the river, and didn't really move for about 20 seconds, then bang, she was gone. While feeling pretty gutted that it got away, I was encouraged that the one fish seen had managed to be hooked, and if one had been seen on the immediate stretch, there must be more.
Sure enough, about a hundred meters upstream, the escapee’s larger cousin was feeding voraciously. The water was about a meter deep, with the seemingly well conditioned rainbow sheltering behind a couple of good sized rocks that rendered the flow to almost nil in their lee.
Once again, the first cast produced a take, but I failed to set the hook. The fish had swung well down towards me, and after the take seemed to disappear. Hoping that it hadn't been spooked, I placed a few more casts into the lie, but they turned up nothing. Frustration was about to get the better of me when the familiar swirl of a feeding trout in the lie. Once more it disappeared, and it occurred that the fish was not holding where I saw the rises, but possibly a couple of meters further upstream. Sure enough, a couple of cast's above the rock tempted the invisible fish out of hiding, and a good hook-up occurred.
In the same fashion as last time, she made a beeline for the middle. This time it didn't stop, and tore off downstream aided by the ample current. I tore off in pursuit, along the base of the vertical bank from whence I had come. The fish just kept going. I kept stripping out line, tripped over, banged the elbow, nd waded around an inconveniently placed Rose Briar. Thankfully she only bolted once, and from here I was able to bring her into the net fairly soon after.
At two and a half pounds she wasn't huge, but was well proportioned. She certainly hadn't spawned this year. The fly 'self released' in the net, so I let her slip out quietly back into the river.
Three hours of fishing to see two fish wasn't great, but the last 10 minutes had produced enough excitement for the day. Instead of backtracking downstream, I elected to nudge up the bank and cut across the rose briar clad hillside to the 4WD track that led back to the car, Sarah, and he novel
Not a bad way to spend your birthday.
