New Zealand (vol. 2): West Coast Redemption

29 - 31 October 2015

I had unfinished business. Seven months prior, I had walked miles up a pristine West Coast river only to turn around and go home at the whim of a recently acquainted fishing buddy. I desperately wanted to know what lay upstream. When my Kiwi friend Nick Moody suggested we go on a fishing trip together, I seized the opportunity to scratch this persistent itch.

This river is hemmed in tightly by mountains and impenetrable beech forest, and the river's banks are littered with boulders ranging in size from footballs to buses. It's an unwelcoming terrain. Like many of the rivers in New Zealand, the best fishing is found some way upstream but there is no maintained track up this valley. It meant our progress was made not in straight lines but by finding the path of least resistance through the trees and teeming vegetation beneath them. It was even harder and slower going over the boulders at the river's edge, where each step had to be taken with studied concentration because the rocks were loose and wet from a spitting rain. Made ungainly by our packs, Nick and I both took tumbles and I worried about the tolerance of our ankles. To add to the gruelling experience, the sandflies of the West Coast are relentless. Prolific clouds of them constantly swarmed around our bodies. It was far better to keep moving than to rest, when the biting insects would settle and test the weaknesses and gaps in clothing. It's a valley for dedicated souls only, but because of that, it held the allure of much promise and mystique. 

Ten kilometres up the valley, only a little further than I had reached on my previous visit, we began to encounter trout in consistent numbers. Our focus switched from travel to sport and we rigged up our fly rods in eager anticipation, ignoring a brief rain shower. In a small side braid of the river we spied a trout holding in the darkest of the yellow water, beneath an overhanging beech tree. Nick won the game of "rock, paper, scissors" and soon made short work of the fish.

We settled into our usual routine of walking slowly upriver, searching the water for fish, spotting good numbers of them, and taking turns to cast. I caught a trout next and then Nick followed with another, suggesting some naivety on the part of the fish. The fishing season was still very young and it was entirely possible that we were the first anglers to cast a fly to these trout in many months. 

We noticed that many of the trout were heavily scarred, typically with what appeared to be bite marks on their backs. We concluded that there must be a healthy eel population in this river, and I remembered seeing an inquisitive eel, as black as tar, on my previous visit. The eel had emerged to investigate the commotion when I landed a trout, and was very interested in the scent of my landing net. It was incredible to think that something larger and meaner than trout hunted in these waters.

When hooked this fish immediately fled beneath a large boulder, where it beached itself!

In the late afternoon the sun briefly emerged from behind the clouds and bathed the valley in golden light. Its energy-giving warmth dried my damp clothes and imbued a sense of optimism. I soon caught the best trout of the day. 

Nick had been told by someone in the know to look out for a prime place to camp. There are very few flat, grassy places in this valley and we would have struggled to find a suitable place to camp without this useful piece of information. The camping spot wasn't visible from the level of the water and could easily be missed, but Nick had been given a loose description of markers to look out for. We eventually found the hidden oasis in the evening and set up camp for two nights. We cooked and ate our dinners, ignoring the sandflies as best we could. I was tired and went to bed early, settling in to my tent to read a copy of Derek Grzelewski's 'The Trout Diaries'. I lasted only a page or two before I fell asleep. The constant sound of the river was reassuring and I enjoyed a deep sleep. 

Sandflies use kamikaze tactics with boiling water - perhaps they're attracted to the heat?

I woke a little after dawn and went to collect some water from the river for my coffee. The air was cold and still and my body ached from yesterday's hike. As I filled my pot with water, a trout rose next to the bank of boulders, mere metres ahead of me. Still in my pyjamas, I fetched my rod and cast a dry fly to the trout, which hungrily obliged. The trout had a gorgeous golden-orange hue and its capture marked the perfect way to start the day. 

We agreed to split up on this morning. Nick would take the water immediately upstream of our camp and I would walk up some distance, leaving him enough water to fish. Because I'd already caught a fine trout that morning, I was in no rush to get going. I lingered and watched Nick stalk and catch several trout, and took some great action photos.

My memories of the time I spent on my own that day are now a little fuzzy. I recall catching a couple of trout without ever thinking the fishing was dead easy. The going felt a little more difficult than the day before, as if the river was revealing a fickle nature. My defining memory is of spending a long time trying to tempt the largest fish I encountered. It was lying in a deep pool of water and the only way to reach it was to scramble on top of a boulder the size of a Range Rover, and cast to it whilst lying flat on my stomach. The structure of its deep lair was just too complex to ensure a good presentation of the fly. It was a seething, boiling convergence of currents around boulders and a fallen tree. I could see why an alpha fish which I estimated to be around 6 lbs would make its home here. After a flurry of casts, the wily fish stopped moving altogether and assumed a rigid posture. It must have seen me or just instinctively known that something was amiss. I knew I was beaten and accepted defeat.

I walked back downriver and rejoined Nick in the afternoon. Curiously, he mentioned that he could smell cigarette smoke in the air but we never did see another person. It felt unsettling to know that in a place so vast and remote, someone may be so nearby, intruding on our solitude. 

We spent a little time in the evening fishing together and each of us caught a final trout for the day.  

We packed up the next morning and began the arduous walk back to Nick's car, which we had left parked just off the main road. Along the way we spotted a good sized trout in the water and it was simply too good to pass up. My rod had been stowed away but I put it together and caught the trout with a dry fly. Just downstream of the image below was a small waterfall, and I had to play the trout hard to keep it within the pool in the image. It was a wonderful way to sign off on this trip. 

I have come to learn that I am intensely motivated by exploring the unknown. Fishing new rivers fascinates me. Discovering what lies around the next bend in a river is deeply satisfying for my soul. Returning to this river and finding out what I missed on my previous visit felt very rewarding. This wasn't a big fish river. It would disappoint anyone who held wildly exaggerated expectations. But it made up for it with an abundance of innocent trout in the 3 to 5 lb range, trout that were easily fooled, and that is quite a rare thing in New Zealand. Looking back, the effort to reach these fish was more than justified. The sheer sense of solitude and escape was unmatched in my time in New Zealand because very often other anglers, hunters and trampers were encountered on my trips. The camaraderie developed with my fishing buddy over three days of fishing bliss was the icing on the cake. I miss not having the time and freedom to do it again. 

 

Next: (Vol. 3): Boat Ride to Paradise

Previous: (Vol. 1): The Happy Return