Some NZ fish and scenery
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Hope you enjoy these.
A very small sample of what Ian would have experienced.
The two first photos my mate Mat McHugh took and we have a website you can see more
The others are of three different rivers in the South Island.
A small pastoral spring creek
A West Coast river
A creek smack in the centre of the South Island
Heres a rainbow from the South Island
Thanks to Peter Morse from Australia for this pic.
We had a great time, chasing rainbows and they made a change from the browns.
We have some great saltwater fly stuff too.
Arguably our premier inshore saltwater target is the Pacific yellowtail, which we call Kingfish but our bread and butter is the Kahawai (which in Maori means “strong in the water”)
Sorry most of my photos are grip and grin.
I’m hoping others might post their pics of NZ too.Awesome photos Simon! Regrettably, I spent my entire time in NZ on the North Island, so I missed out on some cool scenery and the epic brown trout fishing.
I spent a few days with my friend experiencing the NZ saltfly – fishing for Kahawai and Kingies, but we were a bit early for both (we were fishing around Te Kaha in early spring). Claire, his wife, did manage to get a nice kingfish on conventional gear.
I’ll have to go back and experience the SI some day. Thanks for sharing your pics, I miss NZ even more now.
PS The eels really freaked me out when I was handling/releasing fish.
I’m sure Simon can give you a more thorough explanation, but I’ll share my experience with them.
I’m tempted to say that they’re devilish creatures, but they’re actually pretty cool in a freaky way. They’re native to New Zealand and live in the rivers. They do eat trout, and you’ll catch the occasional fish with some scars from an eel battle. I think an eel would be hard pressed to take out a large, healthy trout, but a sick or wounded trout is a goner.
They have a remarkable sense of smell. I was told that when a trout is hooked and played they release some sort of fear/stress pheromone in the water that the eels pick up on. Sometimes they’ll chase fish that you’ve hooked up, and you need to intervene to save the trout from being attacked. It’s pretty cool how well they can smell. I would hook up, fight, and land a fish, and several minutes after Id released the fish, an eel would come along and follow the scent all the way up to the place where I handled and released the fish – look around, and then swim off after deciding there was no fish to be eaten. They’ll investigate most any unnatural smell – if you wash off a plate in the river they’ll come to check it out.
Apparently they can live incredibly long lives and grow to enormous sizes. I was also told a few stories about accidentally catching them on the fly.
I’ve attached a picture of a small one that was following us while we were walking up a river. We caught him in a net for a quick picture and released it unharmed.
I would suppose New Zealand is one if the most beautiful places on the planet, and the fishing… the pictures tell it all. Thanks for sharing it with us yanks. Well actually I’m a rebel but thats another story!
David King
I really didn’t mind the eels too much if I had waders on, but when I was wet wading I was extremely uncomfortable when they were around, which amused my fishing companion to no end.
I bet Simon will probably get a good laugh out of this. Ben seemed to think it was hilarious to watch me freak out when an eel swam around me and between my legs.
Enough with the eels and back to the fish.
Not me, not my fish. Caught down on the South Island in what I understood to be some sort of canal system. A Kiwi angler caught this fish and as you can tell, killed it, so my buddy posed with it.
It’s supposedly a really artificial environment in those canals, so I don’t think there are many tears when a fish like this is killed. Simon, any idea where this might be? I can’t recall the name… (not that you need to identify it, just curious to see if you know)
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