Fishing with Camo-Guy…
I travelled a few hours south to have a day or 2 on the Waiau with my good friend Guy. We got to the river with great expectations because it can fish very well late in the season. Guy was into one almost straight away while I was rigging up. He lost that fish. We struggled from then on. Guy hooked 3 or 4 and landed one, I hooked 2 and landed one. That was our tally of events for the day. We tried a range of methods from dry and nymph combo’s to swinging nymphs to swinging streamers. The next day the rain hammered down and neither one of us were keen on going out again.
This weekend has some great prospects! Two friends of mine will be over to fish so it may be time to take on the winter rainbows at the river mouths again. I hope the weather is good. The forecast for the next few days is for snow to low levels with extreme cold and wind-chill.
Tight lines all.. Ronan..
This week on SLTV, “Tasmanian Western Lakes” part 2.. Fish, 4x4ing, frozen tents, wisdom and wilderness!
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- Well bent in my only fish of the day!
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- The Waiau..
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- Guy and I had one each.. Mine took a streamer fished on an intermediate line, Guy’s took a deep nymph.
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- One for my F&F expert to identify! Keep an eye on the comments for details on this fungus!!
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- Conditions were pretty good but it seemed that there were very few fish about..
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- Camo Guy
Ah jaypers fungi…after a big bit of trawling its “Hygrophorus involutus” which is a winter sporing fungus…this family of fungi is known as waxy caps or wood waxes…
There were many other types about too, from jet black to the white one photographed! I just googled the name it has no common name, Also says it’s up 50mm high by 20-30 wide. The one I found in the Kepler Forest was maybe twice that size.
Now on the basis of the size difference I just wasn’t convinced with my initial identification…so I had to defer to a higher power, namingly the dept of botany in the university of otago and heres what they came back with…..this is where the power of the interweb kicks in !!!!
I can see why the photographer thought it might be Hygrophorus involutus, but it isn’t that. I can see a deposit of spores on the upper part of the stipe in the closest mushroom, and this is a giveaway for the genus Cortinarius. There are hundreds of species of Cortinarius in NZ, including quite a few different white ones! The spore deposit looks like it has a greenish tint to it (most Cortinarius have a brown deposit) and there is only one tall, white Cortinarius with a greenish spore deposit on the stipe, and that is Cortinarius mariae—so that is what I think it is. It used to be in the genus Rapacea. There are a few other white Cortinarius species—one in particular that is similar is Cortinarius cretax, but the greenish spore deposit makes me favour C. mariae. C. mariae smells nice (like perfume) and C. cretax doesn’t have such a nice smell.
I wish I could nip back and do a smell check!! 10 points once again Breandan!