Kia Ora

We are officially in New Zealand! The flight was great. We left Calgary, flew in to Vancouver, literally walked across to International and stepped onto our flight to Auckland. We flew all night, landed in Auckland at 6:30, walked upstairs and down, and stepped onto a bus taking us to an awaiting jet to Christchurch, arriving at 8:15 am. Nothing like leaving the afternoon of one day and arriving 1/2 way around the world with easy connections the next morning! In case we needed a reminder why we chose to travel to NZ for the winter months, we arrived to this kind of weather by 10:30 am.

We'll keep this update short. AJ checks in with a few trout. This one was sitting in a nice little seam on what was our favorite stream. It was feeding freely on nymphs and it took the dropper.

This 7.5lb brown was hugging the bank, sipping caddis and mayflies. The back cast was hindered by that willow, but a good drift took the fish. Once hooked, this fish went 70 yards upstream, jumping several times. HOT!

Another trout taken by an emerging mayfly along a good out turn on the river.

A frustrating moment as AJ did a good side arm cast. The back cast was a mat of overhanging willows and the fish was feeding under the upstream overhanging willows. Tough on both ends. The second drift through, however, the cast got perfectly into the seam, the trout rose to take the nymph. The dry went down but the hook set saw the rod smack the willow behind her. The fish shook its head and no hook set. Bugger as it was a great bit of video.

AJ checks in with a heavy fish, just at the 8lb mark. We stumbled into this reach of water after having seen it briefly last year. We decided to make a go of it and struggled most of the day as there were multiple sets of fresh tracks and a well defined trail of tracks from the season all the way up this tiny water. But, we pushed up many km and found a few fish that weren`t so picky. We saw a nice trout holding against a white rock against the far bank. AJ stepped up and first cast this came to the dry. A good bit of video with this one. It was interesting as, having just let the fish go, we were again waling upstream when we looked back to the same white rock it held on. There was another trout feeding freely. It was a much darker fish and not the same. Dave`s turn. The first cast a good take on the dry but the fly set was quick. Two casts later the fish took again and a 6.5 lb brown landed. 14.5 lbs of brown from one rock in a foot of water. Sometimes you get lucky.