Spring Creeks with a new Toy aka Rod

After some unbelievable junky breakfast at a local bakery / café (the ham was just an insult) and some NZ-Jade-shopping in Hokitika, I started with some disappointing spring creek experience not too far away. I hooked the very first fish close to the mouth of the creek but lost it as it went around a big patch of weed and I could not and wanted not to follow. Though I walked the river for quite a while I just saw one or two other non-cooperative trout – last time there was more action on that particular creek. Another creek close by was inspected for the lowest kilometer without any sign of fish. 

I decided to head south to fish a third creek with a short section of fishable water. Walking down and fishing up I had shots on two fish that did not work out. The second was in an awkward position to cast and to drift the fly to. Changing the bank would have been the better approach. Lazy me… Further up, close to a willow I spotted a feeding fish well ahead. Adjusted my tungsten-nymph-rig and hooked it. 

A strong tall brown of 6,5lbs came to the net. To my delight as this was the first fish caught and landed on the Orvis Helios 2, 9’, 5# that traveled temporary with me for a thorough test - thanks to orvis.de! A very decent rod that was loaded with a 6# line, a custom made 6 meter special leader and Stroft GTM 0,18mm tippet. The Orvis top flex rod has a significant stiff lower section and seems to be somewhat slower than my Sage TCX of the same specifications. It performed with high precision and could be cast with an appropriate tight loop. It felt a little bit heavier in the cast than I expected it to be. If the TCX would not be grown to my hand the H2 might easily be a favorite tool. A big plus of the Orvis are the titanium coil rings. They take much more abuse than the far too thin ones on the Sage. An aspect of high importance when you regularly carry your rod in the NZ bush not within the rod tube, what most of the tramping fishermen tend to do once in a while. My Sage was twice at warranty because of that issue. The carbon rod tube that comes with the Helios 2 is a blast – it is ultra-light and in contrast to my expectations ultra solid. Overall the H2 is a top of the line, high performing toy/tool.

Back at the car and the small bridge I spotted an other brown. Important about that one was to be prepared for the approach after the fish would have taken the fly. As the cast was done from the bridge, thus immediately after the cast I would have to climb down to the bank, but there was a small spot where I could land it. Unfortunately the fish was so weak and might be handicapped that landing it was not an issue. It was a thin brown in poor condition that was instantly released.

Back on the road going south towards double Hari aka Hari Hari. I ended up in the same 'vintage style' motel (Flaxbush) as two years ago. After all it was the starting peak of holiday season and I was happy to get a hard roofed room that I needed to dry my wet tent. Passing a bridge with around 10 police cars and 25 policeman some kilometers before double Hari I was wondering what happened. Later on it turned out that on this rather long one lane bridge two tourists in a car had broken the wooden (!) side rail and crashed in the river running high and boisterous below, both were dead. Take great care when you drive and do not speed beyond your limits!

A special topic as the police announced to enforce a zero tolerance speeding policy during the holiday season. So going just 1km/h too fast would result in a speeding ticket. Crazy idea because by this rule you end up out of law if you overtake a car in an appropriate manner and you end up paying more attention to your speedometer than to the road and the traffic. Strange way to enforce traffic laws...

A Rewarding Day

Driving to the somewhat hidden access I was lucky as there were no fresh tire marks and there was no car on the access, thus this section of the river might have received some rest. Recently unfished water is an important aspect in NZ - try to fish fresh water! In case you fish with a guide, he (most of the time it would be a him, thus he) should take care of that and make a couple of calls to colleagues to find out where to go. Still sometimes fishing behind somebody might work on some rivers and still catch a couple of fish but it is far from good and should be avoided.  

To my surprise it took a while at the river till I could spot the first fish. Last time I was there, the first pool had two fish and the first was caught with the very first cast. NZ is about sight fishing, blind fishing I do at home enough and thus I was reluctant to fire out a few blind casts. But in that case it later was the ticket to two above average fish of strong fighting 7 and 8lbs on nymph. One caught in a pool where I was lucky two years ago. All fish were of exceptional good condition, no sign of mice diet but just normal deep wonderful shiny browns.

Further up in an infamous pool where the fish are sometimes easy to spot and sometimes very hard (this time) I finally spotted some and got shots on them but no takes, in the end I was successful to spook them with my casts from the bank.

My first thought about the 8lbs fish was that it must have been foul hooked as it was pulling line as hell against the current and a tight brake. It was not foul hooked; it was just made of solid muscles and power, trained in exceptional wild natural environment.

 

 

 

The river further upstream had a section that is rather complex to fish as the whole width is likely to hold fish and the spotting could be only done from a very short distance. The third fish I finally managed to spot, was just meters ahead in fast 80-100cm deep water, the brown was literally attached to a medium sized boulder but it was heavily feeding. To catch that I would have to get the size 12 nymph down very fast and accurate without a long lead. I set up a double nymph rig where the heavy fly was double tungsten pulling the smaller fly down like a stone. My delight was high as this setup suddenly stopped in the current and the fish was on. It was the smallest of the day with 6,5lbs.

Fourth and last fish of the day was at around 10am on the virtual orientation clock (12am would be straight upstream) just around 6-7 meters away. Landed and 7lbs came to the net, the brown showed a remarkable pattern and coloration. This again showed that sometimes the close distance might be the way to go in case fish are not spotable from say 12-15 meters distance due to light or natures camo.

As usual I took and unintentional dip in a notorious pool. I never mange to come out of that river dry. 

Light very fine drizzle started but some sunrays were still on the scenery. A deep feeling of satisfaction and happiness came with it. Exceptional good fishing, not to easy but four to the net was a delightful result of the day. Some more casts and it was about time to head back to the car and down south.

Driving down that night towards Hokitika I found myself pretty much stranded well after 10 pm, everything closed, accommodation not really available and not necessarily needed, thus I ended up at the same DOC campground 10km south of Hokitika as two years before with Ines and Tobias. Less than ten meters away from the last camp spot there. I cooked a simple meal of fresh salad, readymade butter chicken, some desert and the better part of a bottle of red. Fine drizzle started again and I went to bed early the next day.

My original intention was to fish a remote backcountry river in the Haast-area after the front and rain that was about to arrive. The front was said to be in the area around Wednesday. Thus the plan was to fish a west coast spring creek or two before the front would hit and to drive down the coast on Wednesday during the rain and to chopper to the remote river on Thursday. Would that plan work out?

Backcountry Christmas

As two years ago the packing for the chopper flight had to be done pretty quickly. I was lucky that I did not miss any substantial items. Except that I should have taken the pack of toilet paper I had in my hand but did not throw on the pile, thinking that there would be plenty at the hut as experienced before. It turned out that there was nothing at all. So I had to use a workaround in terms of some 50NZ$ bills I packed. Lucky I had some. No just kidding, kitchen paper was the bail out. It worked fine.

Flying solo is a plus as there are no weight restrictions. Lots of stuff - good for three people was loaded to the R44.

The sky was grey and the clouds where very low, thus only a pilot knowing the terrain very well was able to fly the direct line. Wayne knew exactly where to fly so the sneak through over the ridge with close to zero visibility for some meters was perfectly mastered and down we dropped to the river valley and towards the hut.

A big cyclone has hit the slopes around Karamea around Easter, deforesting large areas. All trees on some slopes lay flat on the ground, several houses must have been damaged by that extreme storm.

First evening at the hut. I had it all for myself. Love that calm. Dinner: appetizer, filet, rice, salad, yoghurt with some cold beers with candles lightening the room in a warm light. Reading at candle light. Nice evening. Unfortunately it was much too warm to lighten the fire.

Candle light, that is the word, if you travel to a hut take three things in particular: a pack of long burning candles, toilet paper and insect spray to get rid of the sandflies in case there are too many in the hut (cover food before you spray and then leave the room for some time). And for the joy of the next guest: leave all three left overs at the hut.

 

First day at the system I decided to fish branch A due to the rather high main rivers, which made crossing the confluence section impossible (ABC refers to the three branches according to the old blog post nomenclature two years ago). Out of that reason I had to grass-bash through blossoming grass as tall as I am – hello hay fever... that was the maximum dose possible that day. Every single grass bush exploded to a yellowish cloud of poles. Same did my nose and eyes: they just exploded. 

In one of the early pools I caught an active feeding fish and unfortunately ripped it off. But after a couple of minutes it was back on station and was feeding again. I set up another nymph and caught it again! This time it saw the net and I could remove both flies. Did somebody say NZ fish are supposed to be spooky?

I fished well beyond a gorgy section and beyond smaller forks following the main right arm. Very low numbers of fish even in the highly promising pools only one or none… That was rather disappointing compared to the last visit, back then there were considerable more fish not to say many.

 

In total I caught some 4 fish of around 5 to 6,5 lbs. All browns, all on nymph, all in good shape but not sign of mice at all. Such a low result that I tend to count the double hooked fish twice.

Back at the hut I was surprised to see it full: an elderly tramping couple and a group of four young men on special vehicles, obviously not used to sports as they were all sleeping in their beds – it was just around 8 pm. I felt a little bit unfair to fry my filet second round and having a couple of beers. That night a lot of wood was sawn… by the snoring sleepers.

Next day was the turn of branch B. The whole thing was a little bit limited in terms of fun as my left Simms wading boot for some reason caused awful pain with every single step on the upper inner ankle. No explanation for that never had it before. Now I understood a picture I saw once before of totally intentionally cut Simms boots. I was close to consider the same. After some days I just ended up to tie only the lower part of the lace and keep the upper section open. That made me looking very stylish! It might be the fish did not like that.

Fishing was tough. Very low numbers of fish and low numbers of eels. Lots of walking up until the bush and well into the bush up to a big pool that was the point of return two years ago. Back then there were close to half a dozen fish feeding in that pool. This time I saw three not feeding. Water was clear and dropping, a recent spate had added fresh water, spotting was good, thus perfect conditions. I had no explanation for the low numbers of fish. Catching three fish the whole day. Nevertheless the fish were in very good condition around 5,5 to 7lbs, but no sign of mice died, as the area was heavily covered by 1080 just weeks before.

At night I came back to the hut rather late. And to my surprise it was busy again: this time with two Germans, one relocated a decade ago to NZ, who had a fishing rod and funny nymphs with him. The other one was his tramping buddy. We chatted for a while. I had NZ sausages that night – not too bad at all. 

Next morning we made arrangements to share the fishing. I went to C branch and the two others to another section. I walked for an hour strait on the track to cover previously unknown water later that day. The whole day was starting very slow in terms of fishing. I hooked a first fish close to the bridge that was pulling me through two pools downriver. Strange it did not come to my mind that it might be foul hooked. Exactly that was the case. Landing it, the fly was hooked on the back fin, so this fish did not count. Close to that section I caught one soon afterwards that was regularly hooked. At least that one was a real beauty of something close or around to 6,5-7lbs (think I mentioned before: I am unable to memorize more than three fish a day by weight and details, and after some days most of that is blurred as well). To make a long story short: it was the single one fish of the day. I followed the river a little bit more upstream than before and was happy about the track leading back to the hut. What a strange day celebrating Christmas. It was the 24^th of December. At the hut Tortellini and some red wine I shared with the two folks from Germany. The only reminder of Christmas was unpacking a very generous present from my parents and my thoughts of the usual joyful celebration at home.

No fly out on the First Christmas Holiday or Christmas NZ-style (they celebrate on the 25^th) – thus I had to spend another day on that system. Branch A saw me again. Not so far up this time just below the gorge. More kind of taking pictures as there was not much action in terms of fish walking upstream. Even the always good lower pools and a specific section did not show sign of fish! I ended up blank! It happens, but not often.

On the way back to the hut I had some casts to educated fish on a pool of the main river. After a while I gave up and layed down on the bank. Not much sandflies thus a quick snooze was an inviting option. After a longer while I got back to consciousness and got upright and to my surprise – first thought was “it is a dream?!” – there was a fisherman coming up at the bank. An elephant would have surprised me slightly less. It turned out that this time it was a Swiss tramping couple,  he casting an evening line and she around the hut.

To my surprise he did not ask me thousands of questions about NZ fishing and the local river system but about where I have been traveling the years before. Being in NZ I would use every slight chance to gain more on site information about fishing before I would ask somebody about his international travel experiences. His high visibility orange fly line, the experience the days before and some other experiences made me silently thinking: folks if you travel to NZ to fly fish then DO your bloody homework. Read books, internet, collect information on fishing, do your preparation thoroughly and behave accordingly! It just improves your chances to catch the odd fish massively.

Nevertheless the conversation that night was nice and I shared the next bottle of wine with my “guests”, this time it was a rather young but still pleasant Cabernet/Merlot from The Mission / Napier. In Napier Tobias made his very first steps three days after his first birthday. Back then he was so unbelievable proud and excited about what he just achieved.

10:30 the next morning – it was Friday the 26^th December – the chopper flew me out to Karamea. Farewell River – take care and get the fish back!

On the way out I made an aerial shot of a house close to the water, a house where I wanted to say hello to the residents after being back out of the bush…

West Coast Spring Creeks – The 10 minutes Hatch

We drove up from nice dead end Okarito to not so nice through traffic Hari Hari. No the name is not a joke. But driving there we found a person right to the village sign being photographed by his partner – might be he was German and his name Hari – har har har. And there was a pile of filled plastic bags with a sign saying “My pony’s poos – 50cent a bag” – selling horse shit as fertilizer. In Europe they sell horse meat as beef. Unfortunately I always wanted but did not take a picture of that pile.

We found a not so perfect but ok motel accommodation (Flax Bush – not much choice in Double Hari) with some cats and a confiding neighbors cat (here are the cats in case you wondered about the hint in the last post). Part of the cleaning ceremony of the room – we waited for that – was to use some awfully smelling room deodorant. It smelled like in a catholic church after a real heavy incense ceremony. I immediately felt being beamed to a church in Bavaria and was about ready to go to the Biergarten.

Double Hari is located just right on one of these rather large West Coast diary plains. In a couple of these landscapes there are nice spring creeks. Rather famous and except the best known – La Fontaine – rather short, thus most of them take one fisherman every few days. But most of them get fished more frequently. And exactly that was the bad and the good in our case. The plan was to fish one of the smaller creeks north of Double Hari. We drove there and on the access track we passed a fisherman that obviously had finished to fish exactly the stretch we wanted to fish. Communication with him (!) we figured out he was a fly fishing enthusiast from France traveling around the world to fish. We shared information and he mentioned that he had good fishing on the two km of fishable water on that particular creek. Still I decided to fish behind him – some curiosity how his fishing would have affected the fish. He mentioned a specific nymph – a nymph I normally would never have fished, as it is far from anything real. I call it the ESPT. He showed me this fly – I never had one of these and never fished it before.

Further down the track we parked the car, had a lunch snack and prepared our gear. The 3F (fly fishing French aka Ludovic) arrived and after a while he came to me and asked if we would have a GoPro as he saw a fixture for it on the side mirror. He needed some help with it to get his data of two weeks fishing to an external storage. I proposed he should come over at night to our motel and we could take care of that. After a while he came back again with two of his ESPT nymphs – wow cool!

Fishing behind the 3F was tough. Saw several fish but rather spooky (no surprise). I ended up catching one and after around two hours I quit, Ines had turned around a little while before and came towards me with the Prado. Fishing behind somebody is definitely a challenge or just idiotic. Later that evening I tried to fish a small creek on top of the well known. But the water level was very low and the creek pretty much grown over by water plants.

This night we took care of the GoPro issue, Ludovic could for the first time watch his filmed 17+ minutes fight with a brown trout that I would assume was around double figure or even well in the doubles – he estimated it less. In my opinion the use of a landing net might have shortened the fight considerably. We sat long outside, drinking beer (Thanks!), being eaten by the mosquitos (Tobias was sleeping inside) and chatting about fishing. A nice fly heads evening. Besides his fishing success stories he had another interesting story to tell. As mentioned in a post some weeks ago there is a highly visible small fly shop some 50km south of QT close to Garston, I mentioned the lady there doing her job. Ludovic had an even stranger encounter with her. She treated him rather impolite and pretty much booted him out. Might be she was afraid of him because he was unshaved and not freshly showered and dressed? I guess every third trout bum entering that shop looks like that. I just mention that here because we thought she might have had a bad day as we were there, but it seems she had a bad month. Travelers’ advice: stock up on fly gear in QT and just pass by the hut in Athol. Or if you want to experience something special: go there and ask a few questions.

The next morning I set the alarm clock to 6am to get to the river (the major spring creek close by) before dusk to fish the morning rise to be able to fish to some active fish – at least that was the plan. I was at the river well before the sun. I watched a nice sun climbing over the horizon, mist being evaporated by the increasing strength of the sun, a hurdle cows relocating from one paddock to the other as driven by a magic hand, but what I did not even see was trout at all, not to speak about active feeding trout. There was nothing on the river! Nothing! Might be some body used some 1080 the night before. A nice early morning on the water that totally destroyed my sleep-balance. It was funny to stay and wait for three hours on a river that was supposed to be full of fish without seeing any animal besides bees doing their work and farting cows.

I was back with Ines and Tobias close to 11am. What to do with this day? A drive to the small village Ross. There we found a cafe and a gallery with an original etching of Pauline Bellamy that I was close to buy but did hesitate. She seems to be a relevant NZ artist – what finally made me hesitate to buy that non cheap print was here overall wired oeuvre. On the way back we passed a small creek that I wanted to give a few casts. Ines and Tobias drove to the nearby ocean and I was given two hours to fish. I did pretty well ; ) and caught 4 nice trout and lost another two or three. All on: Blow Fly! I was warned about this river ‘if fish are too spooky leave the place’ – I found them very cooperative. All around 4 to +5 lbs. I saved some of the relevant water to give it a chance the day after with Ines, so I had to walk a longer stretch via the road and a farm track to the designated meeting point upriver to avoid spooking the fish. 

We went back to Double Hari, had a decent fish burger at the local hangout (I cannot call that restaurant) and I was off again to fish the creek from the morning for the evening hatch. Third time fishing on that day! The evening hatch was much longer than the non-existing morning rise: exactly 10 minutes and about five fish made use of the surface feeding option. I made use of this time slot and caught one. Strange creek – I must have fished on the wrong day.

After and other night in Double Haris Hilton we drove towards one of three larger villages on the West Coast: Hokitika. Before that we gave the saved upper part of yesterday’s afternoon creek a go. I tried to guide Ines. But I saw only two fish at all which were a little bit unforgiving to Ines. Seems like that creek is really less interesting further up above the bridge.

In Hokitika: Greenstone on every corner – three years ago these pieces where cheaper or? Right at that weekend there was the Wildfoods Festival in Hokitika. A Festival more of wild people and music than of wild food.

Just after we did our groceries before going to the festival, we were right outside on the parking lot packing the goods to the car, an acrobatics show started on the blue sky. Five yellow painted stunt planes did some fascinating figures. That was the perfect target for the Canon 70-200mm, 2,8 IS II! What we saw was the “The Red Checkers -  RNZAF Aerobatics Team”.

 

The real wild food such as beef tactical sausages, worms or cicada was not available or we did not find it due to not looking intensively for such tastes (as Ines announced it a few days ago I was already looking very forward to some exotic gourmet thing …). So we went for the sold burger option: ciabatta instead of a bun and as desert strawberries with ice. Picking some beer I thought the beer selling person wanted to make fun of me has he said he could only sell me one mug of beer at a time. So I had to go a couple of times. In Munich you can order 10 liters at once on that specific big Touristparty in late September. Here you would have to go 30 times to get 10 liters – the Kiwis care more about your health! 

Most of the people at the festival were dressed in some more or less funny costumes. Most of them having fun and about to get drunk. We did our part of irritating the people by letting Tobias freely push his stroller over the area, so even some semi drunk guests and the Police asked us if the happy smiling adorable baby would be ours. Fun afternoon – even if there was no fishing involved!

Our campsite for the night was DOC at Lake Mahinapua – a nice site that got really busy that night, but everybody was quiet. We were lucky as we pitched our tent at early afternoon before going to the festival. Among all the guests we finished cooking latest (delicious lamb chops) – we made it just before the official quiet hour on that campground at 10 pm.