I'd been holding out for a good fish picture to write this one, but it never came since I spent the vast majority of the time fishing alone.
To cut to the chase, the fishing is amazing. Not in the sense of high numbers, nor can you run up a day of huge fish like you easily can in Alaska. Make no mistake - the fish are certainly big. The average fish in the rivers that I was lucky enough to cast a line ran about three pounds (22 inches or so), with a big fish being five to six. There are huge fish swimming around out there and I hooked one or two that would probably have been seven or eight pounds, but you don't see them as often. The famous rivers hold a handful of 20-pounders, but those obviously are fish of mythic proportions and didn't get that big by haphazardly eating a dry fly.
What makes the fishing so amazing, in my opinion, is that you are literally hunting for the fish. Many of the Kiwis won't blind cast over even the best looking water, so the result is that you stalk your prey and can see the entire the entire process unravel before your eyes. Imagine seeing a six-pound rainbow feeding in a river, slowly approaching as quietly as possible, picking the fly that you think will get down into his feeing lie, and then praying that your cast lands in a spot that won't spook him and might even put the fly in front of his face. It can be both amazing and agonizing, because more often than not the fish gives you the fin and darts away to deeper water or better cover.
The spookiness is interesting, in that the fish don't really have natural predators. The birds generally aren't big enough to eat them, and there also aren't water-loving mammals to chow on the little guys. I think it mostly comes from a combination of gin-clear water and a low fish count; there is typically only one or two fish in a given hole, which makes them the literal kings of their space. Anything foreign that comes in better be perfect.
Fly selection didn't seem to matter much, assuming that I made a cast that didn't spook them. Pheasant tails in a variety of sizes worked fine, although I did catch fish in dry flies, streamers, and even some large stonefly nymphs. Presentation was the key, and the size of the fly was largely determined by the depth of the water in which the fish was holding.
So now to an actual fish story, and it's about the greatest fish I ever caught - ever. It wasn't the biggest I've caught or even the largest fish that I hooked down here (though not too shabby at 25" and about six pounds), but it was the single most awesome battle that I've ever had with a trout.
Erin and I had finished a five-day backpacking trip the day before, and my heels had huge blisters on them from hiking in soaking wet socks (it has poured the third day of our trek). I had caught a nice rainbow just below the car park when we were waiting for our shuttle after the hike, and the following day I decided to try my luck again. The bank just looked too good, and it was only a 15-minute drive away from our lodge, after all.
Because of the blisters and the fact that I was pretty much wiped out from the hike - meaning that my brain was not fully functioning - it wore bright swim trunks and flip-flops to the river. Every other shoe and sandal just hurt too much!
I walked down to the same spot that I had fished the night before, which was a 10-foot high cut bank on the deep side of the river. To avoid spooking anything (remember the ugly swim trunks), stayed out of visual range of the river until I got down to the end of the run. From there, the plan was to slowly work up the bank, scanning the water as I went for any sign of movement. The bank itself was sporadically lined with chest-high bushes, so at times I was forced to get in the prickly bastards to see the river.
When I had just about gotten up the the riffly part of the run and given up hope of finding anything, I stuck my head out through the thickest part of the bushes and saw a daddy of a fish finning just below me. Game on! Now how to actually get a cast in front of him. There were far too many bushes around to get a cast at him from up on the bank, although I definitely searched for about fifteen minutes to find a suitable gap, which meant that I was going to have to get down to the water. The bank was far to high and steep for me to get down close to casting range, so I ended up walked down about 100 yards to an easy spot to reach water level.
From there I started to slowly creep up the bank. The rocks at the water's edge were extremely unstable, such that my first few steps sends miniature rock slides hammering into the water. This would not do if I actually wanted to get within a mile of the fish without spooking it. With not other option at had - and me cursing my flip-flops about ever second step - I walked/crawled my way up the bank, testing every rock that would be my foothold to make sure it wouldn't slide. Twenty minutes later I was finally up to the spot, breathing hard and sweating. And this is supposed to be a leisurely sport!
I took a minute to calm my nerves and zero in on the exactly holding spot of the big fellow, but the glare was strong enough that I couldn't actually see him in the water. After a few minutes he took something off of the surface, which to me was the green light to tie on a large dry fly and go for it. My first cast was pretty much rubbish (the nerves get me every time!), but the second looked good and he took the fly without hesitation.
If I had been cursing my flip flops before, now I was praying that they would stay on my feet. As soon as I hooked the fish, he took off downstream and put me fifty or so feet into my backing on the first run. I awkwardly ran downriver after him, trying not to fall on my face as I went. Finally I gained line on him and got to a roughly perpendicular position, and hoped that the worst was over). At that moment he ran directly across the river and then up to the very head of the riffle, taking all of my line again and about 100 feet of backing. At this point the only way to salvage the fish (and my pride, more than anything), was to cross the river and go after him.
The water was deeper than I expected, and on my way across I found myself almost chest deep struggling to keep my flip-flops from washing downstream. They were only about half on when I reached the far bank and the fish started thrashing in the shallow water, so I ended up throwing them up on the shore and continuing barefoot - mostly hoping that the majority of the fight was over.
I started to reel in the backing but couldn't pick up line fast enough, so I started stripping line as fast as possible while moving up to the fish as quickly as I could. Finally I got within about twenty feet of the fish, and by then he had calmed down to the point that i though the fight was essentially over.
I slowly edged the fish over, almost grabbing my leader to seal the deal. So here I was, shoeless, with about two hundred feet of line trailing behind me in the river . The fish decided to make another massive run, which instantly had me back into my backing and running painfully over the rocks. My line and backing got impossibly hung up in the rocks and gravel that I had just come up, to the point that I was close to breaking off the fish if I didn't give him any more line.
I had been getting my butt kicked for the previous two weeks and did not want to lose him, and so I found myself trying to bite through the backing in order to follow him down river. So now you have a shoeless fisherman in bight swim trunks looking like an epileptic while deperately trying to cut his line on purpose. Ridiculous! Finally I freed up my nippers and cut the backing, at the moment when my rod tip was literally in the water and I had nothing more to give.
I then gave chase along the grassy part of the back, pricking my feet with the weeds that grow in the grass. Damn my flip-flops and blisters! He took me about yards down to the next hole, where after about five minutes or so I was able to subdue him enough to land him.
It was a beautiful 25" male rainbow, with an awesome hooked lower jaw and serious shoulders on him. I released him almost one hour after the initial hook-up, elated but completely exhausted. It was, without any modicum of a doubt, the most incredible fish I ever hooked.
