2 Most Magical

When we run into people in New Zealand, we always tend to listen a great deal more than we talk. We simply mention that we're Canadian fly fishers looking for beautiful waters to fish, not necessarily having the biggest or most fish, just to have a neat experience. Those beautiful moments can happen in a 10 foot wide spring creek, breaking the scene down to one ponga fern and a fantail chirping over our shoulder as we cast to a 4 lb brown, or that beauty can be as in your face on the large scale as a dramatic gorge on a sunny west coast afternoon. When we ran into an outgoing Euro couple, Robin and Liz, he was more than happy to share a few places he thought were beautiful to fly fish. We had  a chance to poke around a couple of streams he mentioned about 2 or 3 weeks later, and over those 2 days Amelia & I experienced an out of world fly fishing experience. Pretty? Stunning. Good fishing? Depends on your definition. Not a lot of fish, but when they average over 8 pounds and you work 12 to 15 fish a day and take them all, you wind up with those magical Tourism New Zealand days. The kind that everyone wants to sell you in magazines but happen once or twice in a 3 month trip. It just so happens we timed the weather and water conditions 'just so'. So, a great big shout out "Thank you" to Robin and Liz who put us on the two small waters where the following shots took place over 2 days. We haven't been back since as they are small waters with a very finite number of fish, but maybe we'll get back before we head home end of Feb. For as great a fishing result we had, the scenery and setting was simply stunning on these waters. Casting in the depths of the gorge on the one stream was magical, freely flowing line set against heavy contrasts of beech, rata, and pongas. To have big browns simply gorging on anything resembling a cicada the size of your thumb was a bonus. Amelia had an amazing run of fish as you'll see below. You can click on the images for a slightly larger version.

We'll update this blog again soon with some other amazing fly fishing experiences - not so much for sizes but beauty and neat, smaller scale intimate fly fishing.