Christmas Eve

For three years, we've driven past a river on our way to many days of fishing. We've been told not to bother with it, the fish are small, that it's a nursery water for browns. This year, we began thinking about fishing it. It is a tannin water, hard to sight fish unless it's a sunny day. The upper reaches flow through a beech forest and it's a good year for big browns living in beech forests. And, frankly, it's a very pretty river in spots. The trouble is that the main highway runs right beside it from top to bottom. There again, in 3 years we've not once seen anyone fishing the river along the road. So, a week or so ago, we talked about it as we drove past, asking and pondering of ourselves, and made the decision the next sunny day we drive past, we're fishing it.

Enter Christmas Eve.

We drove across the island to spend Christmas with friends and their family. It was mid afternoon and we had an hour to spare. It was a sunny day. On a lark, we stopped at a bridge 75m off the highway on a busy road leading to the mine. Trucks came by every few minutes. Holiday traffic on the highway was brisk (by north-central south isl standards, anyway).

We parked, hopped out and walked across the bridge for a look. Below the bridge was a marvelous run and two trout finned. No hesitation, it was a perfect place to fish for an hour. I was lucky to rig up and headed below. A rise. A cast, and a 17" brown to hand after 5 or 6 jumps. I began prospecting the water and moved 2 or 3 more trout. I moved upstream to the head slot of the run and searched with a large dry. A ghostly shadow rose to my fly. The fly dragged as I was in the motion of lifting to cast again but paused enough to slow the fly. The fish still came 4 feet downstream. It took! A nicer 2 - 3 pound trout, I assumed, as it tore off downstream. But, as the fight progressed and it wasn't so easy to move the fish or turn its head, that 2 or 3 pound trout grew.

After releasing, I fished a little more through the run at the bridge...

We walked 100m upstream of the bridge and sighted this one... For good measure, this one was sighted a few yards upstream and absolutely hammered the cicada pattern.

In 90 minutes on a sunny Christmas Eve, 6 to 8 pound browns were landed, a few nice photos and video taken, and a couple Canadian kids both got sunburns as they didn't layer or lather up. AJ simply said Merry Christmas to me as we hopped in the car and drove to our friends' place. With a lot of time on our hands through Feb, think we might fish that one again?

:)

Merry Christmas everyone.

Dave & Amelia.