30 fish caught backcountry fly fishing in the North Island of New Zealand on the three days of labour weekend 2019...
The fish were quite active, not spooky and had put on nice condition after spawning. Many large pools contained two to four fish, all rainbows being 3.5 to 6 pounds apart from a handful being under.
We left home just after 4am for the over two hour drive. Was a long walk in not hitting the upper river till lunch and then reaching the first fishable pool at 2pm.
Lots on down stream fishing left me struggling, having 15 bust offs to Dodgy's 2. We got to the hut just after 6:30.
On the second day i was still struggling, running a dry fly and a small wet dropper but my down stream fishing was improving on a very sunny but windy day. At 2pm we turned around and changed rig to bomb with a small nymph off that. Not losing anything on the way back to the hut I started to feel a bit better about my self, both of us going up a side creek myself with the rod and Dodgy with the rifle catching another two in some small water. No deer seen we went back to the hut in darkness for some trout for tea.
Having landed 27 trout in the first two days we set the limit at 30 as we had a long days walk to get back to the car park. leaving at 8am Dodgy hooked and landed the pesky hut fish that had been tempting us for the past two days, then I caught two more to make the 30 a kilometer or so up stream. After that i packed down the rod, plenty of fish seen on the walk out 30 could have been 40 but there was still a long walk ahead we would just have to leave them for another day.
We had a great time and is up there as the best weekend sight fishing missions.
19 дек 2019
