We arrived
there after accomplishing the more or less rough 4x4 track without getting the
car stuck or destroying anything. Some sections were really boggy and every now
and then the trailer hitch made noises from ground contact. I would not like to
do that track with high water or rain combined with my current 4x4-experience.
We arrived early afternoon at the designated camp spot and set up our
fabric-home. Oh an by the way we had fish that night: self bought Salmon.
There was
just one other couple: a Danish writer and his German girlfriend. They intended
to stay just for the night and intended to have a few casts that afternoon on
the lower river section.
The night
to Sunday was a cold starry night, perfect to take some shots of the
illuminated hut (camp light inside, short flashlight burst from the outside to
the hut or manually fluttered moon; timing around 10-20 seconds, medium to high
ISO, 10mm), the Orion (the sword points upwards on the southern hemisphere) and
the Milky Way. A time-lapse did not work out because the dew was so much that
in the morning the whole cam was wet. But that doesn’t do any harm as it is
clean water and not applied with pressure. Taking one shot of Orions’ belt,
that was only timed around 4-8 seconds, a falling star appeared just in that
small section of the hemisphere. What an incidence! I did not even see it
before looking at the picture afterwards.
Sunday was
exactly that: a sunny day. We headed up to the base of the river and started to
walk and fish it up. It seemed like we had the river just for us! Lucky we! The
first fish, a Rainbow of around 4,5lbs with some badly old jaw-injury, came
just minutes later to the net. A good start. More or less leisurely, sometimes
with high focus, sometimes low focus we went upstream. Catching fish by fish,
most of them on cicada patterns or other dries, only few on the nymph. Pretty
much all fish showed at least some interest and with the high and clear sun,
the visibility was perfect. Absolutely fascinating when a cicada pattern hits
the water, the fish recognizes the sound of the impact, even two meters away,
thinking, remembering, turning around, following the fly, inspecting it,
hesitating and finally gulping it and then – if everything goes right – the
strike comes in the right moment. Not to early! I was improving on that day on
the cicada-timing a lot.
It was Ines turn. It did not take long on that day till I found a fish in very shallow water close to the bank and in perfect casting position for a quick try for Ines. But after several casts in the target area we came to the conclusion that it was a sleeping brown. And that was the case. Sometimes it is possible to wake them up by casts and get them in feeding mood. But most of the time, they wake up, ignore you for a while, just slightly change their body movement (an advanced fisherman can recognize that), ignore you sometime longer and once of a sudden swim away, to avoid this annoying human tossing flies with a clearly visible leader in their field of vision. That was the case with Ines fish. So I had to find a fresh one. Not too difficult on that day, but one that was in real feeding mood and reachable by a good cast. I succeeded on that and it was Ines turn. The brown refused or did only look for the offered cicada, so I as the guide in that situation had the proposal of an Adams and attached it to the leader. One of the first casts in the target zone and the fish came, took the fly and Ines succeeded on the strike (Florian: “wait, wait, now!”). She fought it very well, giving me the opportunity to do a few shots and holding the net to land it. It was a nice brown of around 4,5lbs! Pictures and release.
In the
meantime I was around fish seven to the net or something around, eight came and
nine came. Ines recognized that I would strive for the ten. She left to walk
the hour to the camp ahead of me. It took me quite a while to spot another fish
that I did not spook. And finally caught it. Number 10. All where between 3,5
and 6lbs and nice rainbows or most of them browns. Did it matter to catch 10? A
little bit. Before that, I had it only once in NZ. Double digit in terms of
quantity at least and in terms of fun during the day. In the future this will
be just a “add” to this nice day of “10+1”. I packed my gear and started the
five quarters of an hour walk to the camp. A rather boring way with fast pace but
some neat pictures in the evening light.
The next
day – Monday – we got the ticket for the Sunday. It was covered and the clouds needed lots of sun to disappear. Walking up to the point I stopped
the day before. I took Tobias on my back for the walk in and set a fast pace to
arrive as soon as possible as we already started very late. And the worst thing
happened. We run into a party of a retired guide and his long year client. We
talked to them for a while to exchange plans and the guide offered us – as
their fishing was slow – to start just after the next bent. Looking close he
and we only then realized that there was already another fisherman ahead – some
explanation for their slow fishing. We continued our walk upstream and made
contact with the other fisherman, that was waving like mad as we came close to
indicate that he was already there and fishing. I offered him to walk further
up, and we agreed that we would walk up to a hut around 45 minutes further up.
He – I hope he had a really bad day – did not even say ‘thank you!’, knowing
that we already had walked an hour. We accelerated and arrived at the agreed
point – no we did not start to fish after the next corner out of this fellow’s
sight. But the first we did was taking a bath in the cold river.To make a long story short: Monday was the ticket for Sunday blast. Fish where much spookier, close to paranoid, the river up here was more like a creek in some sections and the fish really nervous. It was a hard day’s work for me to get three to the net. Ines turned around and walked back well ahead of me. I followed here and it took close to two tiring hours. The river up there was nevertheless beautiful but fish just not in the mood, the day was hot and fishing was more like work.
Ines was following with Tobias, sometimes close sometimes further away. Making breaks on the shingle beeches or the grass. One of these stops, it was already after lunch break, they were on a shingle bench and Tobias about to get a bath in the fresh but not cold river. He was so keen in crawling over the shingles in the low water, he showed absolute no fear of the water, just crawling in. I made videos with the DSLR from the tripod of this action, once placing it a couple of meters in the river to make him approach me and thus the camera – he followed without hesitation and a big smile in his face. Not before the water reached his chin he became afraid and cried. This no fear attitude is definitely related to the numerous baby-swim lessons Ines went for with Tobias. Might be he starts early to think as a fish and thus be a good fisherman. (I might add later on some frame shots of that footage, but that is already saved redundant on the two external hard discs, the build in 250GB SSD of the MacBook is to small...)
At the camp
both of us made use of the camp shower we bought some weeks ago. A black 20
liter plastic sack that heated the water to a very comfortable temperature
during the sunny day. It worked pretty fine, only some limitations in comfort
as we only could place it on the spare wheel so we had to crouch while taking a
shower.
Another
night in paradise. We broke camp in the morning to go back on the nice rough
4x4 track. Just before we wanted to leave, a party with three 4WDs and six (!)
fishermen arrived. Lucky we! We accomplished the rough track with a little more
confidence, knowing that it would be possible and the car unlikely to skip.
Our plan
was to drive to Te Anau and to stay there for a couple of nights, to give me
the opportunity to go to a distant river again and possibly to meet our new
friends Karen and Rob again.
But before
that we made a detour and I fished for around exactly 80 minutes (I had to be
back after two hours) a river that was said to have suffered considerably from
the flood in January. Nevertheless I was curios and wanted to fish it. I found a very
low river, more like a creek, some fish, a curious eel, impressive gorges and
two rainbows of around 2lbs to the net. And off we were to Te Anau and Fjordland
once more!
