First notch on my school tie - New Zealand 2015

After landing in Christchurch I made my way to a local fly fishing store to purchase a licence, a net of large dimensions, some flies, and obtain some local intel. They were a cagey lot in the store and I was about to leave with only those items bearing a price tag when the youngest attendant approached and said in a hushed tone "you want to try the Lewis Pass, mate, there's a localised mouse year up there." 

I set course for the Lewis Pass in my hire car, in hindsight a little under-provisioned with food and refreshments, and after a two hour drive set up my tent in the Deer Valley campsite beside a river which bore the same name as the pass. Given my secret tip, it seemed the right place to be. I scanned the crystal clear but rather modest waters of the rocky river near the campsite without seeing any trout and drove a way back down the valley, where the river had merged with another, and was now a fairly large and rather boisterous force. 

The river near to my campsite

I pulled off the main road at a gravel track and parked beside the river after a short distance, where the road simply ended, and set up my rod for the first time on this trip in New Zealand. I tied on a large, bushy dry fly, recently purchased, and wished it luck with my first cast to a lovely looking piece of water mid-river, where the current swirled around a prominent boulder. I was stunned when the most enormous trout I had ever seen came up from the grey depths and consumed my dry fly! I remember very clearly its stout girth framed by a massive shoulder hump behind its head, surely the by-product of a diet of copious river-crossing mice. That image will stay with me forever. 

Of course, I didn't do what I should, which was to wait a second or two for the fish to roll and turn back down to its refuge. Doing so would've encouraged a good purchase of the hook on the strike, but I'd barely stepped off a plane and had yet to dust away the cobwebs. The trout's prodigious size made me panic and I struck too soon, pulling the fly from its mouth before it even had the time to close shut its huge maw. Try as I might that fish never rose again and I was left bitterly disappointed. If that majestic trout had been conquered it would've been a start to my trip beyond my wildest dreams. I would've owed the loquacious attendant in the store in Christchurch a beer. Make that a dozen. 

A larger and more boisterous river further down the valley

That and the next day were humbling affairs of hard fishing, no fish and little clue about where to look and how, generally, to succeed. I didn't even come close to hooking a fish although I did see a few. My food and water supplies were running low and I'd now established that there were no shops or supermarkets in the vicinity. Indeed, it was a blissfully remote place. I pushed on west to Reefton, the nearest town.

I got off the mark on the third day of my trip. 

A river flowed through the town and after consulting Kent's guidebook I drove north for several miles, following the river's shallow valley, passing through farmland, until I reached a point where I could access the river by road. After a little walking and wading up the river's stony course I spotted a trout holding in a shallow current, quite out in the open. The fish was somewhat motionless and it took a while to convince myself that it was actually a living, breathing New Zealand trout. I cast a dry fly with a nymph trailing beneath it to the trout several times, yet it remained unmoved and something felt a little off about this fish. I managed to creep ever nearer to the fish, mere metres away, which seemed contrary to everything I had read and understood about the usually canny trout of the island. On the next drift of my flies the trout seemed to shudder to life and it moved to its right to take the nymph. It fought strongly, leaping clear of the water on three occasions, and it was only when it was safely in my new net that I saw it was blind in its left eye! Poor thing. I chuckled that I needed a disabled trout to get me off the mark in New Zealand.  

Considered just a wee nipper in these parts, I'd likely moved outside the parameters of the localised mouse year. It felt extremely good to finally spot and land a trout on this trip.

My first Kiwi trout deserved to be commemorated with a beer so I stopped at the Reefton Hotel and enjoyed a large Speights beer and a roast beef dinner. The latter was styled as the 'best roast dinner in New Zealand' and was a fitting end to a memorable day.   

So many rivers to fish, so little time! Perhaps I'll explore the waters in the vicinity, as they seemed a little more forgiving. The campsite in the town has hot water and cooking facilities and is a little more comfortable than the bush.