NZ Holiday Trip Report – Part 2
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**Warning, this is, once again, a very picture heavy report so you may have to refresh numerous times to get all the pictures to load. I have split it into 2 posts to try to help it load smoothly**
Well, it’s time for round two of my report from my holiday trip around the North Island of New Zealand. From where I left off with the last report, I headed to Rotorua and hit one of the main tributaries of Lake Rotorua in search of some of the monster lake run browns and rainbows that this tributary gives up. I had heard that a fresh push of browns had moved into the stream, dubbed “the ditch” by the local fly shop, so I headed a little further upstream on the following day and tried to get a piece of those fish. I caught a few fish throughout my couple of hours on the water, but the big guy got away right at feet. If we’re playing by saltwater rules, then it was landed because I had my hand on the leader. Unfortunately, I decided that a net was unnecessary when chasing the largest trout of my life, which led to numerous sketchy fish landing situations. I will say that trying to land huge fish by yourself without a net definitely makes it a lot more interesting.
Trail to “the ditch”:
Attempting to land a pig. This fish would have been one of the biggest of my trip:
The Ditch:
After getting a little tired of the ditch, I decided to bounce over to another river for the afternoon. This river was a freestone that proved to be one of the slipperiest rivers I have ever fished. It was seriously more like ice skating than wading. No fish during the afternoon, but just enough hits to keep it interesting.
The next day I decided to hit the road again and head back into the bush for a few days. I made the drive to the next river on my list, found a campground, and settled in with enough time left in the day to scout out a few access sites before turning in for the night. The only way that I knew the new year had arrived is when I got woken up by the neighboring campers cheering at midnight.
Some pictures from scouting the river and my trip to the new location:
On New Years morning I loaded up my stuff, drove to the best access that I had found on the previous evening, donned my gear, and hit the river. This day turned out to be a great one. It took quite a while for me to start getting into fish. I blew my first real shot…a little slow on the set. Just upstream I found a perfect holding spot. Inside soft water of a fast outside current on the backside of a small island. Perfect. I made my way over there after a very sketchy river crossing and crept to the water’s edge. Fortunately, I was right, and it was perfect holding water. There was also an absolute tank of a rainbow sitting on the inside edge feeding a few feet below the surface. This fish was one of the biggest I had seen all trip, but I had to switch up flies before taking a shot at him. Off with the deep nymph rig, on with a big dry and dropper. My fingers were flying, one knot, two knots, three knots, clip, clip, clip, and I was in business. I looked up to get re-zeroed in on my fish….but there was no fish. He had completely disappeared. There was no way that I had spooked him, no way. I had carefully tucked myself off the bank and well downstream to ensure that I didn’t blow it before at least getting a cast. Nonetheless, the fish was gone, and when I glanced downstream, I realized why. There was a raft just downstream of the run where the fish was and another raft just upstream. In the 30 seconds that I spent changing flies when no rafts were in view, two rafts had come around the corner upstream, proceeded through the run, right over my fish, and spooked him. Awesome. Time to head further upstream.
Another half mile or so upstream and few nice pools later I got a perfect stretch of water. Sure enough, there was another jumbo rainbow sitting in the soft inside water at the head of the pool. Game time. One of the most popular pieces of advice about fishing in NZ is, “make your first cast count.” I definitely can’t argue with that advice, it’s true 99% of the time. However, for this particular fish, it was more like, “make the 285th cast count.” I seriously cast to this fish for a solid half hour, no exaggeration. Drift after drift, fly change after fly change. It acknowledged nothing. No movement toward my flies. No hits. Nothing at all. It would move around frequently, and spooked once or twice, but always returned. One time when it spooked, I started to throw drifts through the deep run that it had spooked into. Two drifts through the run, and bingo, fish one! I thought I had him, but it turned out to be a significantly less impressive rainbow. Still a great fish though.
After landing that fish, I worked back up to the spot where my new rainbow buddy was, and sure enough, he had returned. More casts, more fly changes, and still nothing. Finally, I went with one of my favorite patterns of all time, a great little caddis nymph pattern. Cast, drift, recast, drift, recast, drift. Nothing, nothing, nothing. Finally, as my drift was approaching the fish, he moved, opened his mouth and ate. I set, and there was tension…game on!
The fish went absolute ballistic. First was an onslaught of head shakes, then a blistering run out into the fastest line of current. I realize that there was nothing that I was going to be about to do to stop this fish until it tired slightly, so I took off downstream right along with the fish…slipping, sliding, and tripping my way down the edge of the river, praying that I didn’t break an ankle. Sure enough, I was finally able to get the fish turned, gain some line back, and then it was off like a bullet again. A few more runs ensued, plenty of head shakes, and even a few aerial displays, but I was finally able to get the fish into the shallows and tail it. I can not even possibly come close to describing how happy I was, the whole thing, the chase, the take, and the fight were just plain awesome.
A few underwater shots:
The pool that this beauty came from:
And finally, the magic fly. I have to admit, that when I was taking these pictures I couldn’t help but think about how much Neal would love to see some fly shots:
I continued my day after releasing the fish and worked quite a ways further upstream with little to no success, which surprised me since I was fishing runs like the one below. For record, this pictures does no justice to this stretch of water. It was one of the best looking pieces of water I have seen, and was a solid 10 feet deep in the middle.
Evidence that it had been a long day of fishing big, heavy, deep nymph rigs:
Shortly after the above photo was taken, I proceeded to bury a hook in the back of my right arm…passed the barb of course. I couldn’t use the fool-proof mono trick of removing it since I was by myself, so I instead resorted to just biting down and ripping it out…not too much fun, but effective, albeit on about the third attempt. It was the first two attempts that were the unpleasant ones. Not even that could put a damper on my day though, and I even proceeded to land one more really nice fish on my way back to my car.
My biggest NZ brown at the time:
An eel skeleton that I found on the hike back to the car:
The obligatory IA food shot. This was my dinner, can you tell I’m a student? Nothing beats cheap…I’d much rather spend my money on flies and petrol to get to the river:
The sunset that night was pretty spectacular. You can see how full the campground was by the reflections of cars in the picture. Holidays are a busy time for camping in NZ, and this campground was particularly packed:
Continued from above:
The next day I packed up my stuff and hit the road again, heading to an upstream section of the same river. It was only about 20km or so upstream, but it was actually well over 100km to drive down and around to the access road. The scenery was top notch though:
Sheep, sheep, and more sheep:
I arrived, parked in a campsite, and hit the river. To make a long story short, I worked up to a really good looking pool, nearly topped my waders twice trying to get access to it, worked up on top of a short “cliff”, and saw 6 large browns suspended just under the surface and actively feeding. I proceeded to blow shot after shot, and the ones I did convert, the fish didn’t cooperate. The day ended with no fish to hand but plenty of memories.
A crap picture, but it gives you an idea of what I saw. There were 6 fish exactly like this one, and for size reference, this fish was probably 20-21”:
Spot the fish (as a side note, this is a very easy fish to spot compared with most encountered over here):
Need a closer look?
The pool:
The next image is one of the highlights from the night. On my way back down river toward the campground, I came across this bait chucker. He had dragged a little kiddie inflatable boat up with him, apparently to make the trip back downriver a little easier. The whole sight was just absolutely hilarious, and the pictures depicts it quite accurately, especially with the rednecks in the background drinking beer and jumping off the rocks at the swimming whole below camp. They later decided to stay up until the wee hours of the morning, get hammered, yell obscenities in total disregard of the presence of their kids, and play the same cd on repeat for the entire night. It was awesome…and I mean that in total sincerity, it was absolutely hilarious. And hey, at least I had the walls of my tent as noise insulation.
The next morning I woke up and hit the trail in search of a piece of water upstream, that, according to some other fisherman I ran into, was just a “short hike upstream.” As they described it, it was “only about a 15 minute hike, up and over one ridge, and it dumps you right out at the river’s edge.” If by that they actually meant that it was 45 minutes up the trail, up and over at least three ridges, and a fairly serious hike, then yes, they were perfectly correct. Seriously though, I’m not complaining. I absolutely love hiking into “remote” water, and the scenery on this hike definitely couldn’t be beat:
I worked my way upstream throughout the day, covered a lot of water, and caught some really good fish. Here are a few shots of the river and nice rainbows that I landed that day:
One of many solid brownies that was cruising the edge of this pool:
First rainbow of the day:
More shots of the river:
This shot gives a good idea of just how immense these pools are. In this situation, my leader is about 15 feet, meaning that this fish is about 10 feet deep in this picture:
Check out the size of the tail on this fish:
A nymph eater:
White tips:
The release:
Another grip and grin:
The real day maker was a brown that I landed at the very end of the day on my way back to the trail. It was an absolutely awesome fish…old, dark, and beat up. It was the kind of fish that had definitely seen it’s fair share of excitement throughout it’s life. A hiker actually ended up popping out of the woods just as I hooked the fish, watched the whole thing, and happily snapped a bunch of pictures for me, so I didn’t even have to use my tripod.
A few more scenery shots:
And a few shots from the hike out:
And with that, the day ended with a smile once again plastered across my face from ear to ear.
The next morning I awoke and embarked on one of the most unpleasant events in life, packing up camp in the rain. Here are a few shots from the trip out:
Notice how this road is only one lane wide with blind corners….yeah, it’s still a two-way road:
Any truly remote location requires fording a river to get access:
One last parting shot of the fish that will forever live on in my memories:
I have one more part from this trip to post, but sadly, there were no more fish.
Nice report Tim.
That’s my home water! Something else huh? 😎
I built these steps about 20 years ago when I was fresh out of school. They’ve been washed out a few times since then.
There’s some mighty fine water just upstream from here
There’s a track that takes you down there, but it’s a bit hard to find. If you’re in the neighbourhood again, drop me a line and we can maybe hook up 🙂Thanks for not posting river names 🙂
Cheers,
Stu
Stu,
You have some excellent home water! I loved it down there. It would definitely be fun to meet up some time. I thought that piece of water that you’re talking about above looked awesome, couldn’t figure out how to get to it though. I’m also planning to hike into the hut/lodge upstream sometime in the future for a couple nights and fish around there.
Never could get all the pictures to load, but those that did, along with the narative, were outstanding.
PS:
I would simply write ‘wow’, but Corey beat me to it. For alternatives, my Thesaurus suggests these words:
Holy Cow.
Holy Mackerel.
Holy Moly.
Whoa.
Cool.
Amazing.
Awesome.
Far Out.
Hot Damn.
Golly.
Gosh.
Ye Gods.
Gadzooks.They all apply.
Keep it up.
Cheers,
TimThanks guys, I’m glad that you all seemed to enjoy the report. My trip over the holidays was definitely a lot of fun.
Neal, I’ll be sure to bring my portable hard drive with all of my pictures on it to New Orleans. I’ll let you know as soon I know what our schedule is…crossing my fingers that I can sneak away either Tuesday or Wednesday.
Here is another load of pictures from the end of the trip. No more fish since I spent the majority of these two days sightseeing around Tongariro National Park and only spent the evenings on the river (unsuccessfully).
National Trout Centre:
A cool viewing window in the banks of one of the on-site streams:
They had quite the impressive cane rod collection:
And a few fish in the kiddie pond:
Tongariro National Park:
No, I did not stay here:
“Mt. Doom”:
The scenery was amazing:
I’m very happy to see how active the entire country seems to be in the fight against didymo. There are signs and warnings everywhere, and there were even free pre-mixed bottles of cleaning solution at one of the National Park visitor centers. Please, if you visit New Zealand, learn about didymo and take the necessary precautions to stop the spread.
Sign outside of Turangi:
Some images from evening spent on the Tongariro River:
My trip ended on a negative note when my car broke down on the side of the road with steam pouring out from under the hood. I hitch-hiked into town, figured things out, spent the night in town, hitch-hiked back to my car (in a hearse, no less), limped into town 2km at a time, only to find out that I had a blown head gasket. Not cool at all. I had to cut my trip short and take a bus to get back to Auckland. I just picked up my car the other day, leaving my pocket substantially lighter since it was even more expensive than the already shocking quote. Unfortunately I think that basically killed my plans for a DIY bonefish trip and officially leaves me as a “starving college student” once again. It was an unfortunate end to the trip, but if nothing else, I suppose it at least added to the “adventure.”
I’m heading out in about 8 hours for a 5 day trip to a couple of rivers that I didn’t get a chance to hit over the holidays. Hopefully I’ll be all re-loaded with pictures and experiences to add another installment of my NZ adventures upon my return.
Tim
Beautiful stuff Tim! I can’t wait to get down there! I will send you our trip plans later this week to see if we can hook up. Looks like we are going to be around Christchurch the second weekend.
Joel
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