Backcountry Trip Report / Photo Essay
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I caught up with a good mate a couple of weeks ago for a long weekend mission into the NZ backcountry. We loaded our packs and set out for 4 days of hiking and fishing. Here are some of the scenes from the trip:
Obligatory IA food shot. Nothing but the best for us… ::) It went down well after spending the whole first day hiking though.
The fish weren’t there in huge numbers, but we managed to find a few throughout the day.
We didn’t manage to get a shot at any deer, but we did stumble upon the remains of some other hunter’s success.
This guy will go down as one of the most impressively colored fish I’ve ever caught.
The cicadas were out in force, and quite a few of the fish responded accordingly, coming to the surface for our dries.
I unsuccessfully continued my journey of trying to catch a fish on a mouse.
A few cool huts added some character to the nights.
And a few more fish were caught.
With the sound of these guys slowly fading away as summer draws to a close, the time to get out on the water is now.
Hopefully I’ll be back to pay these fish a visit again before too long.
Looks like a great trip, beautiful fish. I like that cicada pic!
A trip out that way would be a great adventure, putting it on my list of places to visit one day
Thanks guys, glad you enjoyed it. To answer some of the questions:
These fish were actually from two different rivers…we hiked up and over a saddle to a second river halfway through the trip. However, the first 4 fish were all from the same river and were amazingly diverse in their spot and coloration patterns.
The NZ hut system is a very cool system. There are over 950 huts all across the country, and the hut I posted a photo of isn’t even one of the nice ones…the first night we had a water tank and gas stoves. I wasn’t aware that there were huts along the AT, but I think in general, a similar system would struggle to work as well in the states. Imagine a public hut on the Lamar or Slough Creek in Yellowstone…I expect it would get far too much use to operate on an effective first-come first-serve basis.
The Riverworks reel isn’t mine, and I didn’t personally fish with it, but I was impressed overall. Quality appears to be good and the drag performed well. I’d like to see it in battle with a couple of big turbo-charged rainbows before I give any final opinions on it, but overall I was impressed with it.
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