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?

“I Would Have Waited Forever”

So, here we are driving to the river with our new raft in the back of our van and the CD in our stereo is playing the Yes song, “I Would Have Waited Forever”. Dave and I look at each other smiling and laughing, thinking that the words are all too fitting regarding our sentiment towards our long awaited raft. The reality is that we really did “wait forever” as we ordered it over 2.5 months ago from China and the delivery process turned out to be extremely slow and tedious. The flip side is that we’re super happy that it did show up and now having completed the maiden voyage, we know it holds air. Bonus! 

The only unfortunate part is that we only have 5 days left before we head home, which is not enough time to arrange shuttles and drive to various waters we had hoped to float this trip. Being dead tired from two months on our feet, putting on the miles and pulling some long days on the river to the point of exhausting ourselves doesn’t help matters either. So, I guess for now we’ll wait for the next 8 months to pass by and we’ll simply visualize the waters we plan to float, knowing that next year some amazing adventures await.

It never ceases to amaze me how much more there really is to look forward to here in NZ and how many more places there are to discover on such a relatively small island.

Another line from the same Yes song stands out, “Just take it as it comes, for everything will come around”

Go ahead... laugh

Amelia & I want to put a dvd out on some of our favorite aspects of New Zealand. One of those things has to do with tiny waters that are of no consequence to most anglers. We love them and they seldom are fished as they are typically barren of fish, save one or two fish over 1 - 3km length of water. We spent a lot of time this trip exploring and talked to a lot of land owners to access such water. Usually, we were told not to bother or pointed directly to where the owner, manager, or farm hands have seen fish. Helpful is very helpful. But, every now and then, when talking to the land owners, we get laughed at. Such was the case late December as we drove up to ask permission. The property owner simply looked at us, laughed heartily and continuously, "In THAT stream?!!! Are you out of your mind" - HA HA HA "In THAT stream? SERIOUSLY? You want to fish in that???"  We were almost told to stuff ourselves as the request was seemingly so outlandish. On and on went the laughter. We simply kept replying "We know that you know your land, but would you mind if we had a go anyway? We're here, we love the landscape, and we simply love photography..." 
After literally 10 minutes of being laughed at and having others on the property come over to see what was so funny, thus furthering the laughter in our direction, we were told we could have all the go we wanted.
So we did.
We tip toed along the tiny spring creek.
Through the grassy pasture.
Along the fenceline.

The spring creek looked stunning but it was not quite ankle deep.
If only we could find a bit that was knee deep.
We found it.
And we found this. 7.5 pounds of it to be exact. And we found a couple others quite similar.

 And then we found where the spring met the river a ways down. And that was full of fish.

We never saw anyone a few hours later when we drove back out from the property. Nor have we been back. We'd hate to be laughed at again, but, more to the point, we'd hate to telegraph that there are, in fact, fish on the property. So, next year, we'll drive up and knock on the door again. And get laughed at again. And we won't mind. Go ahead. Laugh. And 20 minutes later, when we're on the water we'll be laughing too.

Respite & Catch up

It is hard to believe we're this close to coming home. A week to go after 11 full weeks on the go, fly fishing New Zealand's South Isl. It has been a marvellous trip. Frankly, however, we're tuckered out. Literally fishing 7 of every 8 days, much camping, much walking, a lot of eye strain while sight fishing. A heck of a trip, but knackered as of today. With a week to go, I'm not sure how much fishing we'll do this week vs doing some filming of scenes for a couple of projects on the go, visiting friends, and letting the body recover. 3 months on the go at 8 to 14 hrs on the water each day, camping the back country... about cooked.

Let's catch up a wee bit though. Frankly, we haven't posted any photos from late Dec through mid Feb. When you're in the back country full time and come out for food, a shower, and a quick email check, time to update the blog and Facebook is at a premium.

Here's a few pics from a fun day we spent on a west coast river. It's off the coast highway and it looked like it has fish, so we decided to give it a go back mid December. We began at the bridge, headed upstream. The water was inviting, clear and nice pools. We saw no sign of fish as we went up, but the water was so intriguing we couldn't help it. But, as often happens when exploring, we found ourselves in trouble yet again. The river kept getting steeper. The rocks getting bigger. The drops higher. The walking on giant logs of beech trees got a wee bit tougher.

It was about the time that we were scaling over one such boulder and tucking under a log to pull ourselves up over the next boulder, having not seen a fish in 2 hrs of clammering and stammering the gorge that we decided to bail out. Looking for a way out of a gorge other than the way in isn't so easy. We spotted a track high above, but how to get there would present an issue. Stupidly, I decided I could pull myself up a sheer rock face to a plateau, then pull AJ up to me before scaling up to the track, and hope it led us out. Plausible, until as I was pulling myself up the first rock wall the bit I was holding onto let go and I slid down the rock wall 3 or 4 feet, losing a finger nail and scraping the hell out of my hand and arm. Like a good fly fisher, I'd rather wreck an arm than let go of the fly rod so I could steady myself. About then AJ piped up that we could have gone 20 feet to the right and come up a nice grassy trough right to the track. Easier, indeed.

We returned to the van and drove downstream of the bridge to the viewpoint high above where the small river reached the Tasman Sea. Beautiful, but we had to get a better camera view, walking back down the highway. And of course, when you spend your morning trying to kill yourself in the gorge, lose a finger nail, and then walk the highway looking for a camera friendly viewpoint is when you see the only 2 fish of the day, 200m above the Sea. So, back to the bridge, walk downstream, and drift HUGE cicadas over the snout of the fish you saw from high above. Go figure.

Friendly

It's always good to fish with friends. It's getting to be nearly a month since we fished with our friends on a local water but it was good to get out. The day we fished together the sun shone but the good old Nor'wester rolled in mid afternoon. The wind was brutal above the river, but for the most part allowed us to fish. We'd all not fished this reach of river and it was good to get out and explore. Nothing knocked our socks off but it was neat to see what we'd been missing. It's definitely on our list of waters to float next year. This blog post simply shares some neat scenes of a nice day spent fly fishing with some friends.

Fisheries Mtg in Rocky Mountain House

Dave & Amelia,

 

The Fish & Wildlife Division of Alberta Sustainable Resource Development is having a public information meeting on Wednesday, February 15, 2012, in Rocky Mountain House.  The meeting will provide an opportunity for people to view presentations on local fisheries, wildlife and enforcement matters in the Clearwater Area.  The meeting will be held at the Walking Eagle Motor Inn (4915 - Hwy 11) in Rocky Mountain House between 7 pm and 10 pm that evening.

 

Please circulate this information to others.

 

If you have any further questions, please contact me at the phone number below.

 

 

Rocky Konynenbelt
Fisheries Technician
Alberta Sustainable Resource Development - Clearwater Area
P.O. Box 1720, Rocky Mountain House AB  T4T 1B3
Tel: (403) 845-8268, Fax: (403) 845-4750
E-mail: rocklyn.konynenbelt@gov.ab.ca
 
For more information on Clearwater Fisheries Management, please visit our website at:

http://srd.alberta.ca/FishWildlife/FisheriesManagement/FishManagementZones/Zone1EasternSlopes/WatershedUnitES2.aspx

 

 

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.