Fly Blog

My laptop has died, this time for good I think so I’m using a 15 year old computer to put this weeks report together. Not an easy task. To say it’s slow would be an understatement! It seems to be working however so I won’t jinx it..

Last weekend I had intended to fish Saturday and Sunday on one or 2 of the Southern Lakes. Friday night was a late one so I fished the second half of Saturday on Dunstan. It was very good! There were lots of fish moving and I had a few but they are still on the thin side. I have not encountered any rainbows out there so I’m guessing they are either out deep or up the river. I tried the sinking like on it without much success.

Saturday was different! I motored across a nearby lake (not Dunstan!) to try some totally new water. I got to an area with a small river flowing in and some dead trees sticking out of the lake. The water here is cristal clear which makes the drop offs clearly evident. I started with a clear intermediate line and a woolley bugger drifting along and over the drop-off. This gave me a good start but something was telling me go deeper, so I did. Much deeper in fact. I used a Di7 line from Airflo which is bacically a 40 foot superfast sinking shooting head on intermediate running line. I fished it with my 8wt tcx. The wind was idealy light so I could cover water but still have time to let my line reach depth. usually 10-20 foot. My technique is to cast it out about 25-30m, let it sink for various amounts of time then slowly (sometimes quickly!) retrieve it back to the boat. Some people recommend a short leader with a sinking line so that the fly quickly follows the fly line at whatever depth its at. I dont agree with this. I prefer a long leader and allow the first few retrieves to get the fly to the level (depth) of the fly line. A long cast is an advantage with this method because after the fly has reached the depth of the line you should still be far enough from the boat or back to prospect a lot of water. Also plenty fish take the fly as its diving to line level. The longer you can effectively keep the fly from the fly line the less fish you will spook. Takes from depth must be experienced to be believed. They are usually certain, clean and solid. On Saturday I hooked 12 and landed 12.

This is my first NZ winter in ten years so this fishing is basically new to me. I have just realised a type of fishing that consumes my thoughts. I want to on the water and no where else but I have to work. The world is all messed up. It should be 2 days work and 5 days fishing.

Ronan..

On this day 34 years ago I was born.

I went to Fairlie for the weekend to visit some friends and fish the Tekapo canal. Kevin and I fished all day Saturday right into darkness. No fish. Kevin lost one on a prawn bait and I had one hit a black lure at night. We saw some fish everywhere we went so we always had a chance. Sometimes a big fish would come up and roll on the surface as if taking a dry, other times they would crash the surface, sometimes becoming airborne. These fish must have been hitting fry but we could not get a response from them. I decided to fish deep all day. I used a di7 line and various lures to get right down but I also covered any fish I saw move on top. Nothing seemed to work! The canals are a very unique fishery and I want another go. There are huge fish to be caught there which gain their weight from feeding on the abundant, easy pickings under the 2ks of salmon cages. We spent most of our time well away from the cages and these big fish were still present so they obviously move around. The biggest fish I saw was about 10lbs and Kevin saw on he reckoned to be over 15lbs. Well worth going back for!

Ronan..