Hi, I only have a couple of minutes to spare, so hopefully Jeff will do a report or add to this one. Anyway Jeff, Q and I fished the Waiomu yesterday and had a ball. Lots of fish, mostly small rainbows in the half to 1 pound range but a few bigger ones as well. I did manage a lovely fat brown of 4 to 5 pounds. Jeff used his new Bamboo rod, it looks really nice! I used my Sage RPL that I have not used for a couple of years and it was great. I think I still prefer it to its replacement.
It was a lovely warm summers day with good company and good fishing, can hardly wait to do it all again!
All the best.
Mike.
Hmmmm… I seem to have, in the deep, deep recesses of my memory, something like a “lovely warm summers day …”
Hmmmmm… A dream ?? A senior moment ?? A … ??
Wake up, John.
Hi,
It was a great day. Mike and Q picked me up at 6:30 am. The Waiomu was the last river I fished in New Zealand before heading out on my 1 year sabbatical. Mike had taken me there, and it was the first time I had been to that stream. I was really looking forward to fishing it again, this time with the new boo rod.
I hadn?t met Q before, but he was a great fellow. So, with some merry chatter and a few bacon and egg pies under our belts (or should that be over our belts?) we made the 2 hour and a bit trip to the river. The water was a bit cloudy but clearing. It?s not a wide stream, but there are some very deep holes. I started with a small olive nymph and got nothing. Not a touch for about the first 2 hours. It seemed every time I looked back at Mike and Q they were into another fish. That?s right, I was looking back, I was the one getting all the fresh, unspoilt waters, and apparently I was acting like a beater and sending all the game their way. How kind of me.
I had a great excuse though. I had left my indicator yarn back home, and my relative inexperience with nymphing probably just meant I was missing the plethora of takes I was surely getting. Mike quickly dashed this escape route on my and generously offered me a supply from his stash. Thanks! Of course, my great excuse was a bit lacking as by this time I had madly gone through a couple nymphs, and wets, and streamers, so I was just not having any joy and that was that.
Eventually we split up and fished solo. This let me hide in my shame and plonk my ineffectual nymphs into all sorts of fishy looking holes and runs. Finally, coming out of my self induced funk, I realised I was staring at prime trout real estate. If I wasn?t getting any hits, then I just wasn?t getting down to the fish. So, I put on a size 10 bead headed pink squirrel (dubbed body of fox squirrel, with a pink thorax, red wire rib, and gold bead head; and lots of lead wire underneath) and lengthened the distance to the indicator to about 6 feet . On the 2nd drift I was into a 36 cm (14 inch) 1 lbs brown! After that, I was into 2 or 3 more rainbows in that pool, dropping 1 of them when it stole my fly (note to self; check knot on fly after catching fish). I replaced it with a gold beaded hare and copper, also size 10, also heavely weighted, and that was good enough as far as the fish were concered.
At 3:30, I met up with Q as he headed back to the car, and he told me about Mike?s 5 lbs brown, which is impressive not just for it being in that stream in the first place, but for landing it in the close confines and often quite brushy foul . Mike was still above me, so I figured we?ld meet up and head back together. After that I ended up landing 2 more and dropping 2 more. The largest I brought to hand was a 39 cm (15-16 inch) 2.2 lbs (1 kg) rainbow (I have a weigh net, and had a tape measure on my vest; it got lost on my way back to the car). I was very impressed with how the boo was handling the fish, although a 1 kg fish isn?t really going to challenge a 5 wgt rod, it was the largest fish I had hooked with it so far. Anyway, by that time I figured I would head back to the car as it seemed I should have met Mike by now.
Indeed, as I wondered back to the car, at 6:30, Mike and Q were both patiently (still, but that wouldn?t have lasted much longer I suspect) waiting at the bridge. It seemed to me that very little time had passed since i was talking to Q, but obviously I am not clock man. Oh well. In the end we all had a good day. Most of the fish were in the 0.5 to 1 lbs range, with some larger and not many smaller (only 1 of my 6 was under 0.5 lbs; maybe 1/3 of a lbs). We all had a lot of fun, and enjoyed each others company. The Waiomu is a wonderful small, deep, stream (15 ? 20 feet wide, type small). It?s a totally wild fishery, and hasn?t been stocked in years. Very pretty, and doesn?t appear to get too much angling pressure (although some of the locals do spin fish it for a feed of trout). There are quite a few nice rivers like that around in New Zealand, though most people target the rivers and lakes where the really big fish are. And you know, that?s just fine by me.
[FONT=Calibri]- [/FONT]Jeff
P.S. Sorry, no photos as I didn’t have a camera with me.
Jeff -
Thoroughly enjoyed your report. What a great way to reintroduce yourself to those NZ trouts. No pics necessary to wade along with you and watch you put that piece of grass to work.
I do get a bit confused with the weights, whether kgs or lbs, since I never have weighed a fish and just don’t have that frame of reference, and the length in cms, but I do well with the inches, and am real clear on how much fun you had !!
John
Hi John,
When I grew up Canada was changing over to metric. I still think of people in feet and inches, and pounds. Distance is all in miles to me as well. For fish, I’m a bit mixed, length in centimeters and weight in pounds makes most sense to me (bigger numbers : a 30 cm fish sounds bigger than a 12 inch fish; and “just over two pounds” sounds better than "just under 1 kilogram! Wisdom comes with knowing what knowledge to employ! 
Anyway, it was a really fun day. Both Mike and Q ended up with more fish to hand and dropped than myself, but since we fished solo, I couldn’t provide details. When I spoke to Q he had mentioned he had 7 landed and dropped 3, and he did fish on the way back to the car and no doubt picked a few more up. Mike seemed like he was in the double digits before we got past the first hole and run, so I fear to guess his final tally.
There wasn’t much insect activity, which was a suprise. I saw one lone mayfly laying eggs (looked like a large BWO, size 12 type thing), a couple moths and butterlies, none of the expected beetles, maybe a caddis or two, but there were lots of blue and red damsel flies around. Only saw maybe two or three fish break the surface all day, and never saw the same fish rise twice. Given that, it’s not really too suprising the lighter nymphs, and wets, weren’t getting much attention. The fish had no reason to be higher in the water column. Mind you, Mike had a few take swipes at his dry fly he was using as an indicator (a royal wulff I believe), so some were looking up.
Anyway, it was a good day. My waders are an older pair (my newer ones I can’t use as the soles are felt and that’s been banned here) and they are full of blackberry pin pricks. So, I end up quite damp by the end of the day. Didn’t help that I stepped in a soft mud section while wading up to my chest, which made me lean back and get water down the back of them. And, given that I hadn’t caught a fish by that point, I was quite the sorry sight, something even the cat wouldn’t drag in I’m sure.
- Jeff