Top of the Lake & Queenstown

That evening the rain kicked in. Sometimes heavy sometimes none at all but in total it was more than enough to make even the preferred spring creek running high and dirty. I checked it and continued right towards Haast down south on the West Coast. It was the 31^st of December 2014. The plan was to find accommodation in Haast, pack and fly in or out – however you want to term it - the next day. Accommodation was not available and not knowing the river I wanted to chopper to, I considered the risk to high that it was still running high. Besides, as I did not want to lose too much time to head further down towards Te Anau anyway I changed plans and drove up the road over Haast pass, along Lake Wanaka and Lake Hawea showing quiet some spectacular views with sun and rain. Over the Crown range – the direct route from Wanaka towards Queenstown – with hot brakes and hot clutch. Using the broken center line of the road as the orientation it is intended for. It is not a solid line. Just mentioning this, as several Kiwis get really excited if you cut turns and use both sides of the road even if the next car is miles away.  But some of the tourists sometimes do mix up the sides of the road to drive on. Beware of that!

At the Crown Range I passed the festival Rhythm & Alps and was briefly thinking to join the festival. But I was here for fishing, the ticket prices for just a couple of hours would have been rather high, availability questionable and it was somewhat cold up there. But it was tempting. Though it might not have been Tomorrowland… 

Friend and guide Bruce Leitch in Queenstown gave me note that he won’t be available before the first. Thus I had an issue in terms of how to spend the night leading over to the new year 2015. Every kind of accommodation in Queenstown was booked. V.Know in Fernhill was about to close the kitchen so my preferred location for a quick dinner was not available. I ended up searching a parking space that I found after a while (QT might be one of the few cities on SI that has a real trafic issue, it was even worth the two days afterwards), packed my backpack, warm jacket and went downtown. It was chilly. Everything was unbelievable busy, at least a couple of ten thousand young party people to welcome the new year came to town. Dinner was junk food from a stand. Walked around and observed the more and the less beautiful young ladies – most of them dressed in nothing and some of them more than drunk (drying to drink from the lake and falling over... such things). Considering the chilly temperature lots of them might spend the first days of the fresh year in bed… Got a good place right at the harbor to watch the huge firework. And the new year was there: 2015. Bizarre feeling to be alone among thousands.

1:30 am that night I arrived at the 12miles delta campground out of town – just finding a corner for my car. Repacked the stuff so I could sleep in the car, which was ok but not overly comfy. New Year started with blue skies! Breakfast in Glenorchy right at the lake. Some girls having fun jumping in the chilly lake.

I was back to ‘Top of the Lake’. An impressive, must be seen, TV-series of 6 / 7 episodes. Check it out - it is worth it and can be mentioned right besides Twin Peaks.

Around noon I arrived on the first flowing water to be fished but without luck and just one fish spotted that was briefly attached to my fly (no pictures of that water as it is absolute secret, only some locals know it). I relocated to another more common stream and fished it for a while. Green beetle cast towards sighted fish (sometimes close sometimes further away) made them turning their head and smashing the fly. The beetle caught two or three, for that piece of water typical browns of around 3lbs. Actually these were the first fish of the new year!

In a blog post before I wrote about friends you eventually make if you travel repeatedly to a country. One of them is Bruce Leitch. He guided us on two overnight trips the years before. The first one was legend (and the second one not bad either). He and his friend Chico (and we) still talk about it after years. Bruce (and Chico) with a background in gastronomy has that special sense that makes trips or days with him outstanding. You might not catch the biggest fish but his way to setup a day is just perfect to have the real good relaxed time and atmosphere. The homemade pie as lunch or the lamb chops at night with a couple of beers and a bottle of red under the central Otago milky way are just what fly fishing is about besides catching the one big fish. In case you are in need of a guide in the Central Otago / Greater Queenstown region: ask him, he might have the one or other day available for you!

This night I met him at his home overlooking the Queenstown area with a not to be missed view of the Remarkables. He took care of the steak, I organized the red. Fish talk, not only, as life is most of the time more complex than the trout that just does not like your crude imitation. As he offered me a bed for the night early that day, I just thought how relaxed and uncomplicated he was. 

The next day we had breakfast and later he had a client. For me it was a peaceful day in Queenstown. Some shopping intention, did not found anything I needed following the rule “think three times before you buy”, lunch right          at the lake (WTF - why do people cue for 30 minutes for a burger? Guess where in QT… Would never do that myself), some flat whites… average vacation stuff. The Remarkables shopping mall provided little more success and ended with a new ultralite gas cooker and some flies.

Driving southerly from Queenstown you will pass a river after around 40 Minutes that is so famous that a brief stop over there cannot be avoided. On the most frequented access an other couple just left but they mentioned they fished just close to the car, thus I went up as they mentioned nobody would be there. A misinformation as I walked upstream the river was barren. Not a single fish and the answer was simple: two bricks coming down IN the river walking back to their car parked a little bit off site. There was not a single reason to walk in the river. If they fished the river before in the same manner they walked back in the river, no wonder that no fish would show up. Some are just idiots. I relocated to section further downstream, found some fish spooky as hell or aware of every movement on the bank. No fish to the fly there either.

Before those last casts to the spooky fish I briefly drove to a cottage that we rented twice two years ago. Naylor’s house close to Garston. A very nicely renovated old house, sleeps six with large kitchen and living room. Perfect for the fly fishing traveler fishing around the south corner of lake Wakatipu. I made contact to the owner to hear the sad fact that his wife had died just recently. It was good to hear his intention to keep the accommodation business up for the years to come if all works out.

After the last unsuccessful casts at the river, I packed my gear and drove south west towards Fiordland and Te Anau heading to some big adventures…

Do we need to fish such a river? Let’s go to a pristine river instead! Or: 112 km/h on paved roads seems to be too fast.

The drive to the next stream – that was recommended to us – went via a long winding unpaved road over the Danseys Pass. Barren Otago country. Passing the Danseys Pass Hotel we briefly considered to book two nights to fish from there, but we made a good decisions not to ask as it turned out later. We went over the rather long drive over the pass, made a short stop at the lavender farm there, had some yummy lavender ice-cream and continued to the holiday park / campground close to our fishing.

The campground was nicely located on the – on first distant sight – nicely looking river. As it was still early afternoon we packed our gear and went up to check the river in the lowest section of a 8km no exit gorge thing stretch of that river. Arriving there: rather strong didymo infection and frequently used tracks on each side of the shore. After an hour Ines made the right decision: she turned around. I only saw the first fish just minutes later in fast turbid water from very short distance as I spooked them. The river became even more gorgy, some scrambling of rocks was required. The third and the fourth fish I spotted deep down in a gorge pool where I decided to turn around and to call that river a river, as I already walked 2,5km as the crow flies of that 8km stretch. Do we really need to fish a river like that, if we have several other alternatives? Definitely not. Disappointed we decided to leave the next day back to QT. 

On the way towards QT we passed Naseby, a small village with some serious addiction to Curling and old houses tourists make pictures of. Making some pictures, thinking about what it is about to make pictures of semi old rotten buildings. I did not figure it out, so I stopped. During that stopover I took care of some surprise for Ines: another night in QT with a dinner again at Gantleys (the close date of 14th February was more a fake-excuse for that plan than the real reason). We had to book another Hotel, right on the lake (Novotel – decent, look for low prices by booking in advance!), made a reservation at Gantleys and hit the road. Wondering when Kiwis overtake and whom and if and whom not. No pattern found.

Driving up the Kawaru River valley we realized that we had only one wine tasting. As we passed Peregrine we set the indicator and turned right. Peregrine is one of the smaller 'boutique' wineries with a modern architecture cellar and tasting room (but lucky they do not call them 'boutique'). We tried the Pinot Noirs – of them only the Karearea 2009 at 75$ was promising, but the mentioned Wild Earth Pinot 2009 offers much much better value for money! But we bought there a bottle of our first white wine of the trip – a 2009 Gewürztraminer – very fine, in case you like that special kind of wine. In the cellar we met a friendly couple Americans on honeymoon, she immediately fell in love with Tobias.

 


(The order of the above pictures is totally unintended, but I wanted to have two in one line and the Blogger does this totally randomly, after a while of trying I gave up and left it as it is)

The evening at Gantleys started with a long awaited surprise: Jessica was happy to see us again and handed me over an DHL Express envelope. The charger for the Ericsson R290 Globalstar Satellite Phone. Thank you Markus so much, that it finally showed up and did arrive quiet quickly in Queenstown! Testing it the days before with the other charger I ordered in Germany it showed, that it most of the time does not get a Satellite connection and if, it just does not dial the number. The idea was to use the phone in distant (fly/boat in) locations in case of emergency, if e.g. Tobias would be in sever danger. 

Travelers’ advice: forget about the Globalstar phones, they seem not to work in NZ and if you lay with a bloody leg fracture in a tight valley in the middle of the forest: a phone would not help either. The bailout is to chew up 1500mg of ibuprofen pain killer and make your way with arms and the remaining leg to the defined pick up point. Keep fingers crossed you have some time for this way. And Tobias would just have to stay healthy. I checked out all the other solutions such as Spot, New Spot and DeLorme Inreach – all did not persuade as too complicated or only one way communication. Might be the IsatPhone (Inmarsat) might have been the right way to go. Now I am absolutely serious: if you do some solo fishing excursions you “wander” most of the time – unless you are right at the river or ON the trap line tracks – in quiet rough forest or slopes or rocks where you can pass another person only few meters away without realizing it. So if something happens, the rescue will be funny. This implicates maximum caution to avoid slipping, dropping or any other kind of self-injury. Concerning the last: there will be a story on that issue two posts later. Always take great care and only invest what you are willing to risk for a fish!

Back to Gantleys. Both of us went for three courses with the main and the (shared) desert the same: The main was absolutely delicious venison. The wine consideration was in favor of the PegBay Cab/Merlot 2009 again. Yummy! Tobias was lovely (most of the time he is in that mode) and woke up halfway through. Thank you for the second nice evening at this place to the crew Jessice and Lauren and the chef!

To end this post, two more nice anecdotes. All the way from QT towards the south end of the lake Wakatipu we had to follow some young tourist driver that went 60 in curves you could do easily with 90 and still he did brake at the sight of the curve and after the curve. Finally safely overtaking it at Kingston (south end of the lake), driving on for some miles with the normal traveling speed to avoid the vibrating noise that our car develops around 105km/h. I got the impression that one passing car was flashing its headlights once. But I was not sure of it and limited the driving speed a little. And bingo, just before the last bend before Garston there was a white car on the left side and friendly blue capped man waved. Police. You went to fast! 112km/h! Do you know the speed limit? Yes. Waiting for a few minutes, considering this was not the Swiss and not Norway, we probably would be able to drive on and Tobias would have his father not sentenced to prison. Answering to Ines question how much I would expect as a fine: around 100NZ$. After a while the officer came back and showed a detailed ticket of 80NZ$. Online payment possible. Ok. Cool. Thank you! Don’t drive so fast with the child on board! (And without?). To sum it up, that was as good as it could get, I was not really fast, all were friendly and we meet that policemen after a coffee break and some miles more on another street where I actually expected him again. This time passing him I was very slow. In the end I was only pissed that I did not see him, as I am more or less always slamming the brake seeing a white car (yes I know there are some other police cars around).

While taking care of this not value generating payment and having some coffee at the Lazybones Café in Athol (again there…) I noticed a rather simple bike with very few luggage for its obviously long distance rider with a sign on the back saying something like “NZ North to South – Frank Burns – Donations for children in Syria”, I memorized the URL mentioned and after the first payment I made another (shame on me) lower payment to his project. Only then I turned around and said “I just made a donation.” And an interesting and friendly conversation about his project, traveling and so on started. You can read that on his page and if you go there please make a donation for his project. Even if it is just 10XY it helps! Thank you!

After that refreshing incidence we continued our way to a remote location we have been twice before (part of it on metaled / dirt roads close to the legal driving speed of NZ). But this time we wanted to go beyond and accomplish a 4WD track that would lead to a paradise unknown for us up to that moment… 

Fjordland continued and back to the Mataura – or the search for accommodation that ended up with a whole filet in Garston

The next day was turn of the tributary. Shortly after the camp it has a gorgey section than can be circumnavigated by following the track on its true right side. That means, in case you find the track and don’t lose it too often. Which is quiet impossible if you are there for the first time and don’t know the track as most of the markings can only be seen from the other direction and the track by itself is most of the time absolutely not obvious. That is tramping about.

After the gorge there should be a pool with big big trout. But before that there was sweat and severe bush bashing. Coming out of the bush after the gorge the river flows through a lovely valley with low gradient. The pool is right on the end or start, however you wana term it, of the valley. And the pool is like an aquarium in which the huge fish chase the big fish of around 5lbs. The big ones looked dwarfed. The huge ones must have been considerably more than 10lbs - all of them Rainbows. And on a no-wind bright day with the structure of that pool more or less uncatchable. I was watching and filming them for half an hour. Preparing for a few unsuccessful casts, as the fish were altogether ignoring my flies but chasing each other around.

I headed upstream trough the really nice valley. Just seeing to more fish of which one briefly inhaled my fly but did not stick to it. Unfortunately I had to turn around 2pm, to be leaving the camp around 3pm to be at the hut at 5pm where the boat taxi would arrive at 6pm. Too bad. On the right day with more time this could be fun up there.

The way back went considerably quicker than expected, because as mentioned before, the trap line track was much better visible going downriver than upriver. Still it needed very close attention not to lose it. Turning around to see the track in the other direction without the markings, there were some sections which were absolutely not visible. For the next time, I now have the GPS track.

Oh by the way, the only fish this day where from the camp pool. Or did I get none to the net – cannot remember. At the camp, packing, getting ready for the way out. The track / trap line out has the same structure, better marked on the way out. Some sever detours with danger of losing the track due to fallen trees. But I think I now have in 98% correct in my GPS for the next time. In a forest where you sometimes can only see 10 meters and there are no obvious marks it is good to have this digital line.

Arriving after exactly two hours at the hut, I was happy to end the five hours walking of the day and to get rid of the backpack. Ines did pack everything and swiped the hut, so I was ready after twenty minutes, just about in time for the a head of time arriving boat taxi

Bye bye to the hut, with more good memories and nice fishing. Again we had the luck to fish fresh water and did not get in interference with other fishermen.

The way back went smoothly, some more waves and wind than on the way in. Ines picked me from the boat ramp at around 7pm and we headed towards the Motel she had found a room the day before. Coincidentally exact that Motel I spend a night two years before. Everything else in Te Anau was pretty much booked, prices where high. 

The day before the plan for Ines and Tobias with the boat taxi went pretty smooth. Except that the Milford Track boat taxi is not used to transport guests by short notice that do not have a ticket. But they nevertheless took care of Ines and Tobias. And the captain did this in a special way, looking like a real pirate, Tobias was so afraid of him, that he started to cry seeing him. Very unusual for him as he is always excited seeing new people. Reunited we spend another night in the Motel. A Motel Ines fixed for the two nights at some kind of “last minute Te Anau is booked price”. Traveler’s advice: Te Anau can get busy and prices change by demand. 

The idea for the next days, was not yet determined as the weather looked unclear and some rain was likely. For the next day nevertheless the idea was to relocate to a shearer’s quarter 15minutes outside of town that I found in the net (accommodation for sheep-coiffeurs). But we were unable to get in touch with the lady in charge. Too sad as it seemed to be available for the days we planned. Hanging undecided around in Te Anau. Doing some internet/Café-stuff, groceries we did not know what was going on. At the afternoon we gave Karen and Rob a knock, as announced. We had a nice Saturday afternoon with them at their second-home in Te Anau. Fishtalk. Did you fish that? How is access there? How was this stream? Tea. Fly swap. Tobias playing with the toys of the grandchildren. A real nice afternoon!

Still not knowing how to continue, we drove to the station to find it deserted. The shearer’s accommodation had the nice typical stile of the 50ies of the last century. After considering plans and weather (rain for Fjordland) we decided to go back towards QT / Garston and called Naylor House close to Garston (see post before on this fabulous vacation home near Garston!). And it was available again – lucky 3F! Within in shorter than usual time for that stretch, we were again close to Garston in the Naylor House – welcome home! Fishing the Mataura the next day was not a too bad option.

This night we had our traditional dish again: beef filet. But this time in a special form as at the supermarket in Te Anau, the ready cut filet steaks were pretty much sold, but there were whole filets still available. For a price per kg we are normally used to pay for good diced meat at home. But one filet pretty much meant either inviting people from the street or having beef filet three days in a row. We went for the last option. Starting with steaks for the first two days and a very special dish for the third day I will mention later. 

Doctor’s advice: do not eat so much meat, it is not good for you and not good on the environment (but it tastes good)!

Plan for the next day (Sunday) was to fish Mataura River on an access close by. Wondering, if we would have the stretch of the river for ourselves, or if a coach full of fishing tourists would be on the water before us.