Easter Fishing down South NZ

Thursday as promised the storm had passed and snow was lying low in the mountains we shot down to the Upper M for the afternoon. The river was still up and slightly discoloured but clean enough to spot to about waist deep. We found some nice trout and managed to hook 2 - one to the bank which was about a 5.5 lb jack fish in excellent condition. Very light mayfly hatch around 3 o’clock but no real surface activity.



Easter Friday saw us in Central for the day on the M with excellent conditions, blue bird and no wind. My beginners managed 4 to the bank nothing big, nice 2-3 lbs fish. In the back ground the sound of distant gun fire was echoing thru the valley due to the great Easter bunny hunt - teams of 10 head out on to different farms to help clear the rabbits - each team expects over the 48 hour shoot to nail about 1000 bunnies. With 20 teams out there blasting away you can imagine the sound!

The big O has been producing some good mayfly hatches between 1 and 4 pm and resulting in some nice fresh run trout - still quite full.

Reports from friends driving past the rivers has been plenty of fisherman out enjoying the long Easter weekend with anglers vehicles parked up all over the shop.

Update from Fly fishing New Zealand

I am just about to post a vid blog but in the mean time:

The lower 1/3rd of the South Isalnd has been fishing well.

The Cicada season on the west coast is at an end and in-land has been reltively poor due to the regular cold snaps we have been getting over summer killing off the grub.

Sea runs have started appearing in some of our better know sea running rivers and also chinnook salmon are showing up. The Clutha River belkow Roxburgh is one example of this where a solid amount of large salmon have been caught.

The latest cold snap produced teh coldest day in QT in March since 1991 and also a solid flush thru most of the river systems. This should only help induce more fish to run up these systems and we are lookinglike getting some excellent mid to late season fishing.

Tight Lines,

Simon

Latest Reports from SW Guiding - Fly Fishing New Zealand

Beautiful Hand Crafted Rods

Through a network of like minds i.e. serious trout heads, I have been in touch with a very highly regarded rod maker, Chris Carlin of Far North Rods Smiths and he will be out visiting later this year

If anybody is interested in getting a beautifully crafted bamboo rod this is definitely the guy to build one for you.

Going on a New Zealand Fly Fishing Safari

Another Spring Week chasing trout in NZ

Local knowledge and good use of the 'net can be key - after the last rainstorm pretty much all the waters dirtied up and many fly fishers would have been disappointed. I did the research on the 'net and then the miles and dropped into a back country river which was at a higher flow but had remained clean while the catchment next door was dirty and all those around were blown out.

It ended up to be a great day with 9 trout to the bank and one long line release with quite a few other chances as well. Some on the dry and some on nymph with the same patterns from my last blog post being effective.

Check out my net vibes page:

http://www.netvibes.com/swguiding#SW_Guiding_Public_Fishing_Info

You will find access to some useful info you can get to for trout fishing purposes off the net all in one neat place.

November Rivers Open and the Spring weather continues

The weather was quite rough for Lower South Island back country opening day with high winds being followed by a nasty but quick moving front. Anybody who walked into the backcountry rivers would have had a great time if the had the opportunity to fish the next 2 days which were about as perfect blue bird as you can get.

It just goes to show how far South we are situated here (45 deg S) this morning it is snowing hard out (still is as I write this) and has even been settling in some places Queenstown. A very cold blast has come charging up from the Antartic. I am sure it will pass quickly enough and 2moro will probably be bluebird at least out west, maybe not down south.

The rivers wont be too affected as the storm has come in exceedingly cold. There could be some rises in river levels over the next couple of days when it warms up due to snow melt but the mostly there will be clean water available to fish and the higher up the system you go the better it should be.

I have been out guiding a bit since my last report and there has been some excellent fishing if you can beat the roaring 40's winds - local knowledge is a good thing - you can't beat the wind but you can work with it.

Some of the small spawning streams that have just opened seem to have had early spawning runs and numbers are down as rainbow trout have already been dropping back (it's always possible that its the other way round tho) into the main system or lakes. However the bigger of the backcounrty rivers are fishing well and will contiue to do so over the next few months and some of the small streams are still well worth a walk.

Nymphing has been the way forward for the upstream fisherman but dry fly is starting up as the temps increase and it won't be long now until we see some beetle action.

Didymo - it's still there so don't be complacent, check clean dry. Most of the rivers that have been more affected by it over last summer down here seem to have had some good floods strip much of it out and there was been some great fishing in areas that were choked up with it last summer.

Some of the rivers that have bad didymo build ups when I have been there over the last season or 2, the fish we have caught have been in excellent nick and have been very accepting of taking a dry. I have a theory - the fish are looking towards the surface more often for food sources to eat and therefore will come to the dry more easily than when they were feeding pre-dominatly on nymphs prior to didymo. I will continue to explore this strangely exciting idea.

Improving weather in The Southern NZ regions

Since the 1st week and a half of the fishing season the weather has improved (for the time being) down here in the lower third of the South Island. This has created a vast improvement in water clarity and all the rivers and streams are clean at present.

I have visited quite a lot of waters in the last week thru West Otago and Northern and Western Southland - all have been clear and fishing well although flows are quite large still (be careful on your crossings). The fishing has been good and we have been able to sight and catch many fish using standard nymphing techniques. A few trout have sucumbed to the dry fly as well.

As normal at this time of year some of those little hidden gems are the place to be as they are holding fish while they carry good early season water flows.

The trout themselves are a mixed bag with some very well conditioned trout and some trout needing to work hard over the next 2 months to put their condition back on.

There is still plenty of snow to melt off the mountains so we will see some high, dislcoloured water soon enough again - remember you can still find clean water usually and there is always the option to fish a streamer fly.

In 10 days most of the South Island New Zealand back country rivers open.......

Tight Lines

The NZ Southern Fishing Season is open

1st of October finally arrived in Queenstown. After 2 weeks of stormy wet and nasty weather we were expecting some big water. As it turned out the day dawned to heavy rain turning to snow to 300m and then dropping back to a biting SW wind. Our drive South saw us looking at a great deal of water and found all of it big and dirty (a worm fisherman's dream). We decided to drop into my fishing crib and get it set up before driving around for more exploring. 1700 saw us on a water a good long jumper could get across and a fish was spotted and hooked 1st cast and in the ensuing battle the fisherman forgot felts were banned and he was in rubber soles - turned around like a ballet dancer and promptly crashed to his knees smacking one on a sharp stone (right on the knee cap) - a yell followed quickly by an appeal to come and take over the rod end up in us both working a very nice 4lb brown trout to the bank. It was time to go home and get the voltaren to work and some whisky to celebrate our opening and the team work required to get this fish on one hell of a nasty opening day.

2nd of October was meant to be a corker but the next front moved in faster than expected and we woke to more howling winds and decided to leg it to an area that just might have cleanish water and might get us some shelter - but a serious 4wd track to get there with the possibility of getting stuck. This approach worked - we didn't get stuck and we found ourselves hooking a few more fish in a great scenic location.

The 3rd saw us heading to another point of the compass to get out of the still vicious winds to one of my little back up areas and a couple more fish out of clean but big water - no wind tho and time to head home and shelter. The drive home saw lots more dirty water and continuing high winds and today the 4th was another storm coming in with heavy rain.

Oh the fun and joys of spring time fishing