Beech Spring

Amelia & I have a favourite spring creek. If you know beech forests, you understand that they are typically found in hilly, relatively steep mountainous terrain. If you know spring creeks, you know that they typically flow out of the ground in pastoral settings – or at least a ways out from the toe of the slopes that water infiltrates. So, to find a beech forest spring creek is relatively rare, but that’s what we stumbled across a few years ago as we explored a back country west coast river. Our spring creek is very spring influenced but does pick up a few ephemeral, run-off fed fingers. The kick is that for most of its run, it flows under a beech forest canopy and is quite weedy in spots. It’s not a long run either, perhaps 1.5 km of water. And there aren’t fish everywhere but there are a few nice browns, most certainly. This year we’ve fished it once a month and will likely fish it once more before we head home to Canada. On each of our visits, AJ missed one of the largest browns of our trip – likely tipping the scales near double digits. There’s a clip of video that will be on our West Coast Spring Creeks dvd (due out later this year) that shows just how amazing the fish and spring creek is. As it is, this blog post shows how amazing both the setting and fish are. The pongas, tuis, fantails, beech canopy, mosses, and a few browns… it’s a stunning little bit of water. Below, you’ll find some of hour favourite photos of this wee gem.

A Day with the wee cutts

Recently, AJ & I decided to head to the high country to fish a spot we hadn't been in years. The stream flows through a high country willowy meadow and is home to wee cutthroat trout. The cutts are rich in color and a hope for the day was to photograph a few and take some underwater video in the right light. The other hope was to simply relax together, enjoy some photos of the surroundings, and stretch our legs in the high country again. After some long hours in front of the computer lately, it was good to get out together before the hectic schedule of Aug & Sept comes. Here's a sampling of our day together.

Camera guy

In the past, AJ & I have had a few guests simply refer to us as "guide". No name, just a label. It's quite endearing. With that in mind, while filming with the New FF tv show last week, I met James, the camera man sent to shoot the show. I quickly identified with him, me as guide, he as camera guy. No names. Just labels. As it turned out, camera guy was a great guy and so into fishing that it killed him to be on the wrong side of the camera. We hit a few great days on the water, with some excellent hatches, rising fish, great takes on small streams - it was exceptional at times. In a great little twist, we bedded down as a thunderstorm raced in, barely skirting us at our location. Phil had just missed a great take and a few fish still rose. But, with graphite sticks on the tri-pod, no filming could happen so camera guy had 5 minutes to spare. True to form, camera guy took a rod and fished to a riser downstream, to no avail. Camera guy figured to fish where Phil (show hosts get named, especially if camera guy catches the fish) had just missed a fish. Sure enough, camera guy hooks up. I guess as a camera guy, if you have to work on a trout stream and you get 5 minutes to catch fish a day, best make it count! Good on you, camera guy.  ;)

Another nice brown

The guide book said these were some of the toughest trout to catch in New Zealand for how clear the water, how worked over the fish get, how much food selection the fish had in the spring creeks.

Someone forgot to tell the fish.

In what quickly became typical on this year's trip to New Zealand, it was see a fish, get a take. What happened from there was anyone's guess. But the majority of trout we came across on these particular spring creeks were simply ready to feed, actively pursuing anything that came within 5 or 6 feet of their holding lairs, which in turn generally included weeds or woodwork along bank troughs.

The trout to the above right was a stunning fish, the take perfect in the crystal clear waters. A sunny, calm day, blue sky backdrop, and perfect sighting conditions, the spring creek experience was as good as you can hope for. AJ certainly nailed it perfectly. I just finished capturing the video and it's as good as the photo is for clarity. :)  The weather isn't always perfect, but when it is, things certainly go your way. Given the write up in the guide book, we certainly timed the fishing well.