Gorgeous Gorges…
Last Saturday I went and explored a bit of water I knew very little about. That’s what I felt like doing. I knew from driving alongside it at the start of the season that it had a 4-5k gorge which I thought I’d get through in the day. I’d say I got through 2ks of it max! It was very slow going with lots of climbs, some quite technical. I felt like spiderman with a flyrod at one stage, I was spreadeagled across a rock face over a deep pool inching along it very slowly! (A new super-power Kristian??) No risk of course; if I fell off, I’d land in the river, get wet and swim out. Next weekend is more gorge fishing. At the end of the season I’ll be kicking back with some friends in Lumsden for 5 days. We will fish short, fish filled sections of the Mataura each day. It will be so easy I might feel guilty. The walking and lack of climbing I mean! I expect the fishing will be challenging demanding good fundamentals.
Have a great week!
Ronan..
Ps. As you’ll see from my photo’s I have updated a lot of my gear. For info on any of these products check out http://manictackleproject.com/ The Lamson reels are so so nice!
- First fish.. I almost left the river due to the colour of the water.
- Easy river but I know there’s a gorge not far away!
- Another solid little fish..
- Here is one for my fly-blog’s F&F expert, Breandan, to identify… check the comments over the next few days for results!
- 8 well conditioned, beautifully marked fish for my day..
- The gorge begins…
- Some deep pools and steep cliffs in the gorge..
- I had one here..
- Another for the F&F man…
- I guess those lines were horizontal at some stage…
- And one more for you Breandan..
- Clambering over rocks adds another element to the fishing day!
- There were loads of these about. Always a good sign for the future of a river!
- I have a few easy days on the Mataura coming up.. no climbing!
- I had to climb out here. It took a while to find a route back down.
- Went on Dunstan for a few hours on Sunday. I had 3 good rainbows.
- Trout from the lake, prawns from Thailand!
- Happiness is a box in the mail! All my gear is worn out, it has been for ages truth be told! Time to invest in my sport…
This week on SLTV, Episode 5. New Zealand to Tasmania. Its not easy to fish, film, row, net etc all at the same time from a kayak! In this episode I beat Paul 10 trout to 4 on a lake in NZ, Then Paul beats me 5-1 on a lake in Tassie… That still puts me in front I do believe! But were not competitive at all…
Now these ones took a while to get the exact names, I had a idea what two of them were pretty much straight away but needed a bit more research (Googleing)..anyway the first is biting stonecrop(grafán na gcloch), this threw me initially as this usually has bright yellow flowers however the photo shows white flowers on long stems, this is because the plant has gone to seed hence the change in appearance…the second is sunburst lichen (léicean flannbhuí)…and the third is rose campion(coireán coilleach)..these plants/lichen are also found in Ireland hence the Irish names…beautiful markins/colouring on the fish..anyway till the next time..take nothing but pictures leave nothing but footprints..well apart from the odd trout for the pan !!!!!!
Very interesting indeed Breandan! They must all be non native to NZ then.. The rose campion looks like something from Mom’s garden. The colour was more vibrant than the picture suggests. I’ll have more for you next week! Hope all is well you, the family and the extended family!