Graeme Christie | Tuesday, 22 September 2026
My sister sent me a photo on Saturday. "Dam spilling." No fishing in it at all. A gravel path, a white fence, a wall of spray coming off a hydro dam, and a sky that looked like it had more to give.
I do this thing where I look at a photo of water the way I look at an x-ray at work. It's a habit. There is always something else in it if you look long enough. So I looked, and then I looked up the numbers. 900 cumecs through the dam. 1000 cumecs down at the bottom of the river where it meets the sea. 420 coming out of the lake at the top. The lakes must be high and the westerly rain keeps arriving. Southland has just recorded its wettest winter in 46 years, 62% above average, and this catchment sits right in the path of it. The country is apparently drier than it used to be. For the westerly catchments it's a different story.
My sister, meanwhile, had gone off doing Wikipedia sleuthing on the dam. Normal for it to open one spillway, apparently. All three open only in flood. The generators have a habit of overheating, something to do with fire protection and airflow after a change in who owns it.
None of this is fishing. But it bodes well for the fishing. I don't know how. I suspect it does. Although I am collecting some information on the South now, so I go in forearmed.
Here is my working theory. I'm heading down next week. My children are at university in the south, which is the excuse, and the water I want is a long way downstream from that dam, where the tide gets into the river and the browns come and go with it. In May I caught a lovely 5 pound fish there on a woolly bugger, in water that was already big. The other part of it is the whitebait and the smelt. From now through to about February they are in the estuaries and running up the rivers, and the browns and rainbows that live in that slow tidal water get onto them. If the river is high and the bait is moving, I suspect the fish are around eating. I would like to fish for that.
I am either an enthusiast or a crazed loon, but I have some fishing DVDs to watch. A tip on making a wide gape hook. I'm still tying the smelt. Every smelt I tie is a bit better than the last, hopefully they work. The third one had a hand whip finish because I couldn't get the tool in. That is a new skill which is still cack handed but improving with pace. Practice improves you, and so does having no choice.
In the bag this week with the HT 6wt, 7wt, 8wt, a floating line, an intermediate and a 15 foot leader down to 2x. The DVDs, chapter at a time, on the nights before. Might even take a small fly tying kit down.
Whether the river is fishable at 1000 cumecs is another question. This is often the problem with the trout season opening on the 1st of October. Spring weather. High rivers and wind. Somewhere I will find the fish.
Tight lines to you all.