Backcountry Wilderness and a Fitting End

I’ve been in New Zealand for two months but my time here is coming to an end. As I write this I’m getting ready to move on to Japan and South Korea. I have really enjoyed my stay in New Zealand - it’s hard not to with the spectacular scenery, friendly people and the best trout fishing on the planet. 

On the trout fishing front I’ve grown more confident as I picked up the skills to catch trout here. My spotting skills in particular have improved significantly. You have to be able to spot fish here and I may even have turned into a bit of a sight-fishing snob, refusing to cast a fly blindly into the deeper pools like I did when I first arrived. I will certainly be looking to spot more fish on my onward travels in the rest of the world because little beats the thrill of spotting a fish, casting to it and catching it. If I had to be picky, the only thing which had been missing from my time here was a truly large, trophy fish. It wasn’t the be-all and end-all, but nobody comes to New Zealand without entertaining thoughts of catching a whopper, do they?

This is an account of my final fishing trip in the Antipodes - my last chance to catch one of the very large brown trout which the South Island is renowned for.

A New Fishing Partner

With the fishing season drawing to a close and the cold and dark inexorably creeping closer I met up with Nick Moody to discuss fishing plans. Nick has been reading and commenting on this blog for some years and it was good to meet him in the flesh. When I met him at a bar in a sleepy hamlet on the West Coast, the absorbing Cricket World Cup semi final between New Zealand and South Africa was playing out on a TV screen (the less said about the outcome of the match the better). I’d just bought some beers but Nick was keen to get outside into the near dark to see me do a bit of grass casting - it was his way of testing my casting ability. Pass it, and he’d be happy to have me along with him for four days in demanding backcountry conditions. Fail it, and I guess he’d suddenly have had some lawn cutting or painting to do. I’m glad I swiftly passed and could get back to the cricket! 

Mouse Year

As the game went on to a thrilling conclusion we hatched plans for what would be my final fishing trip in NZ before my scheduled flight to Tokyo.  To give ourselves the best chance of catching a memorable fish we settled on a backcountry river in the Canterbury region. Like me, Nick hadn't fished this river before but he had heard tales of its gargantuan trout on the fishing grapevine. This river lay in the heart of New Zealand’s “mouse year” region. A mouse year happens once every 5 - 10 years in New Zealand when beech trees produce a bumper crop of seeds leading to a corresponding increase in the mouse population. Being territorial creatures, mice travel and cross rivers when they find them. When they take the plunge, they take their chances with the trout! In a mouse year a fish which would normally weigh 6 or 7lbs becomes a 10lb fish, all weight and bulk in the same length of frame. I’ve heard mythic tales of 16 and 18lb trout being caught this year. This particular river had been hit hard by anglers all season, precisely because its fish had grown exceptionally big on mice, and now at the end of the season when I was being trusted with the secret, its trout had gained something of a PhD education in the ways of fly fishing. They would be a tough challenge to catch. 

[Not a particularly interesting video, taken at my campsite the night before our trip, but it shows the reason why we chose this venue. I spotted four of the little critters at one stage.]

Our trip was to coincide with the Easter weekend so we expected a crowd of fishermen. We hoped the poor weather forecast, complete with predicted gale force winds and rain, would deter all but the hardy. 

Sunrise in the backcountry

The gist of our plan was to walk up the valley laden with our packs, spending three nights camped out on the banks of one of New Zealand's most productive trout rivers. If you're into fly fishing this has to come close to a lifetime highlight. I'm not sure I will ever top it. It would also be the first such trip I'd do in my life, and by that I mean camping a long way away from a car and pretty much everything else. I can't begin to describe how privileged I felt to have the time to do it. I'd normally be glued to an office desk.

Setting Forth

We became ensconced in nature as soon as we left the main road and followed the rocky course of the river upstream into dry, barren hills. Nick pointed out a New Zealand falcon flying downstream with a small bird in its talons. It began to pluck at its meal with its beak as it flew. Nick also commented on what must have been some pretty effective stoat trapping in the valley - judging by the constant chorus of birds (my favourite sound being the melodic bellbird). 

The fish were evident from the start, all large and fairly easy to spot. We walked with our rods at the ready and took turns to cast to them but it quickly became apparent that they were spooky as hell. Ever wary of even the tiniest amount of drag we got used to watching the ghostly shapes of trophy sized fish slinking away to the nearest depths. 

We enjoyed a surprising solitude. We didn't run into the other anglers we expected, and hikers we would later learn followed another trail into the valley, far up the slopes and away from the river. We camped for the night in a shallow ravine beside the river, as if we were the last two people alive on the Earth.

Saturday saw some strong winds, meaning that we sometimes had to alter our casting approach. We still had no price with the wary trout and it was a long, chilly, wind-blown day. 

We based ourselves for two nights at one of the huts in the valley and this was my first experience of the meeting, talking, eating and camaraderie that comes with sharing a hut with strangers in a remote river valley. The others present were trampers and a lone hunter who seemed to take great pride in wearing short sleeves amongst the dense clouds of biting sandflies. Whilst I used the hut's cooking facilities and enjoyed its warmth in the cold evenings, I still preferred to sleep in my tent a little way from the hut. I had more than enough of dormitory sleeping at boarding school!

Hooking the Beast

Sunday dawned perfectly clear and still. How wrong the weather forecast had been! In the morning we tasted our first real action, when I tempted a huge fish to take a carefully presented nymph. Nick was standing on the bank and saw the fish lift in the water and take my fly. The indicator had not moved by then when he shouted 'strike!' and I lifted the rod into an immovable weight. The fish was hooked! This is the largest fish I had ever hooked and for a second or two it simply did nothing but offer a solid immovable resistance. My initial reaction was that I had snagged a rock but by then Nick was letting out several “yahoos”. The fish then moved and breached the surface like a porpoise, showing its broad head and enormous shoulders. That image will be imprinted in my mind forever. Nick, who in my peripheral vision seemed to be dancing for joy high up on the bank, excitedly shouted “it’s a trophy!” whilst the fish continued to move upstream into a higher section of pocket water. I kept the line as tight as possible but felt just a moment of slack and within a second the fish was off. Nick was crestfallen and slumped to the ground holding his head. He later estimated that fish at 14lbs. I was a little crestfallen too - who wouldn’t be? - but not very fazed by it. It felt great to deceive and hook a trophy sized fish for the first time and I wanted to do it again! 

The weather on Sunday was perfect

That was pretty much it as far as fish action was concerned over the first three days. We spotted several large fish and we got to know the river and the spots where the fish were holding fairly well. We probably each had a shot at 4 or 5 fish a day, but typically they would be spooked by the first cast or a clumsy approach.

Helicopters buzzed into the valley daily and at first we were fearful they were dropping anglers ahead of us but later came to learn they were dropping deer hunters on the slopes above the tree line. On Sunday we noticed fresh boot prints in the sand and a couple of what appeared to be spooked fish lying stock still in the margins. Later that day we spotted anglers several kilometres in the distance ahead of us. They had walked through, probably fishing 'our' water, unknown to us.

On Monday morning we took stock of the weekend and the obvious lack of fish in the net. Three days without a trout between us. Our morale was at a low ebb. Only a few hours of fishing remained before our return hike to civilisation. We discussed the pressure and stress that comes with casting to large trout against a diminishing time period and Nick was clear to spell out a new set of rules for approaching fish, chiefly, to skirt around any which gave the appearance of being temperamental or which weren't obviously feeding. He wanted us to have the best shot at landing a fish on our last morning so we would target only the happy feeders. 

Heaven-sent Advice

We met two young anglers coming up the river and they politely agreed to give us enough room to fish in the time we had left. In passing one of them mentioned that he had caught “too many double figure fish to count” from this river this season alone and he advocated a sparse unweighted nymph fished behind a heavy point fly, because the trout had worked out what a shiny beadhead nymph was by this late stage of the season. He reached into his fly box and showed us what he meant by pointing to a small hook with only a shred of dubbing wrapped about it. I was grateful for his openness when most anglers in New Zealand keep their cards very close to their chest.

Last Chance Saloon

The first hours of the morning followed the same pattern as the previous days. Stalk, cast, spook, repeat. Just as the time was approaching for us to leave the river and collect our packs from the hut for the long hike back to our cars, we came upon a large trout. Nick had spotted this fish two days before. Back then it had been my turn to cast to it and it had been difficult in the strong downstream wind. I eventually let it be after deploying a side cast and never really feeling that my fly had sunk down to the appropriate depth. This time I observed it in the same place, holding in fast water beneath the slight cover afforded by white, frothing bubbles. As fate would have it, it was again my turn to cast and there was hardly any wind on this occasion. 

I realised this would be the last fish I would cast to in New Zealand and I mentioned this to Nick as I entered the water, feeling the weight of pressure. The lack of wind meant I could get downstream of the fish this time, and cast a team of two nymphs to it (including a sparse unweighted fly). And this time I could achieve enough distance with the cast for the team of flies to sink to the bottom and into the trout's mouth. Nick stayed on the bank to mark the fish and I was ready to strike at his say so. Three casts resulted in no interest from the trout and Nick said he couldn’t see the fish any longer. I must have spooked it. I resigned myself to the fact that my fishing season in New Zealand had come to an end, with no trophy fish to show for it. Having been in touching range of these behemoths, it was a crushing feeling in truth.

I said to Nick that I wanted to practice the cast again, to symbolically execute a flawless cast and drift so that I could walk tall from the water - and New Zealand - having beaten the gusts of wind, the intricacy of the currents, the river, if not its trout. Secretly I also hoped that the fish had only momentarily moved and was still there, somewhere. 

I cast the team of flies again, this time right into the fast water where the water was breaking white and where a trout might be disguised from view. Within a second or two my indicator stopped dead. Instinctively I lifted my rod, feeling an unyielding resistance, and just like the day before, it was hard at first to tell whether I had snagged a rock or tree log. 

The line came to life as the fish panicked and moved upstream. Nick was yahooing and dancing on the bank like a madman. A cocktail of joy, hope, fear and intense concentration consumed me, a mish-mash of extremes heightened by the sense of despair I had felt just moments before. 

This fish also attempted to leap from the water like the beast of yesterday, its vast bulk meaning it too could barely porpoise out of the water, displaying its head and the enormous bulk of its spotted shoulders before disappearing beneath the water. I desperately hoped the fly was well hooked this time and concentrated above all else on keeping an unrelenting pressure in the line. The fight was like no other I have experienced. The fish relied on its sheer weight, doggedly choosing to sit in the current whilst I applied side strain. For minutes at a time the trout lay completely stationary before it could be persuaded to move, whilst I nervously debated whether my tippet could take any more strain. We had travelled downriver a little way with the fish as the line's pressure finally began to tell and, in a small sheltered bay of calm water, Nick was finally able to net the fish. It had lasted a long and very tense 25 minutes - the longest 25 minutes of my life!

Relief and elation flooded over me. I allowed myself to let out a yahoo-oo! and we high-fived boisterously. 

This was the most fitting end to my time in New Zealand that I could possibly imagine. The fish had taken the sparse unweighted nymph and in a quiet moment I thanked the young angler. And then I held my breath as Nick said “are you ready?” before he lifted the fish in the net to check its weight. The scale settled just over the 10lb mark. I had to check the reading myself just to be sure. I had done it!

Then to immortalise the moment with a few rapid burst snaps. A lift from the water, and then back into the water again, for the trout to recover and swim away.

As the fish swam away a lone angler with a wiry frame and weathered face stepped forward from the bush to congratulate me. He said that he'd watched the entire episode and as we chatted he was keen to remind me that what I had just achieved was not typical of New Zealand angling. He himself had spent many decades fishing in the backcountry before catching his own 'double' trophy and Nick, standing next to me, had yet to do it. I'd been lucky. The glow of pride I felt could have powered the nearest town for a month.

We began the long hike back to our cars through beech forests which were alive with the sound of birds (and swarms of sandflies if we cared to linger). We emerged at the road after dark and hitched a lift back to our parked cars still some distance away. We were lucky to get a lift within minutes as the clouds started to spit rain around us. In our enthusiasm to catch fish we had probably left the river too late but I’m glad we did.

I’m already thinking of returning to New Zealand next season - I’m hooked!