The Drive By

We awoke to rain. No surprise as it poured the day before and all through the night. Such is life on the west coast of the south island, New Zealand. The waters near us were up and off color, so we packed up and headed north. As can happen, the rain let up as we drove. The skies remained heavy and the air saturated, but we drove into clear waters under the endless bridges and culverts that line the west coast. We drove quite a distance and came to a single lane bridge the west coast is famous for. Given the weather and that it was mid week, there was nobody around. We slowed the van to a crawl as we crossed the bridge. The water was beautiful. Clear, deep blue. The week prior, we'd driven the same route down island and asked ourselves why we had never stopped at this and a couple of other rivers. Today, we were dead tired as we were at day 39 of having had one day off fishing. It's funny how, for as many many days and rivers you have fished in New Zealand, there are multiples of that to fish yet. Your body needs a break from time to time and with the rain having been pouring down earlier and all night, we'd checked our minds off fishing and were enjoying sitting in the van, on our way to get an ice cream bar and back to visit friends.
But, the rods are always folded over on the bed behind the driver's seat. You just never know. So, we inched along the single lane bridge, looking down at the sandy bottom of this stunning river, white rocks dotting the bottom. I glanced upstream to a tongue of a gravel run. Sure enough, this day would not go with out a fishy encounter. There, mid river, as large, dark brown held at the bottom of the gravel, surfing and ferrying mid river, mid current. Impressive!
The van was parked, the rod assembled. I hopped the guard rail and slid into the river below the bridge. I launched the large dry upstream and the fish stopped holding in the current, allowing itself to drift. It slowly rose as it drift about 22 feet downstream, coming up from about 11 or 12 feet down. It was a large pool. It was a large brown.

The amazing part of it - that 10.25 lb brown wasn't alone. No sooner than releasing the fish, we spotted another giant. AJ was up and she simply flipped the same fly out. Same result, frankly.

The cicadas were absolutely electric in the ponga ferns for the 3 hrs we fished the river.

After several good fish were landed in the 3km above the bridge we fished, the weather found us and the monsoons began - as they often do. Rain falling at 25 to 50mm and hour (1 - 2 inches) for 10 to 18 hrs straight tends to blow rivers out for the afternoon, so we stuck to the original plan. Ice cream and a quick visit with friends. Quite a discovery though. 50+lbs of trout in a few runs after spotting from the hwy bridge. Where else in the world can you do that?