Do it yourself !
This guide was originally (and still is) intended to be used by travelling anglers who wish get the best that New Zealand has to offer in the way of trout fishing. I honestly believe that in order to find such fishing it is necessary to travel by foot, independently and (probably) solo. Fitness, bushcraft and time are all required. Interestingly and surprisingly, money is pretty irrelevant.
The original Sexyloops NZ section was carefully non-specific with regards to exactly where to fish. This version makes absolutely no mention of where to fish. The spirit of this section is that you will go and find the fish for yourself. I personally do not believe in short cuts. Sure you can hire a guide to point out fish, you can hire a helicopter to save yourself a couple of days hard sweat and you can even get someone to hook your fish for you, but that's not what New Zealand is about; that's the Mickey Mouse instant trout-fix. Plastic Disney flyfishing.
Don't get me wrong; a guide can be very useful indeed in teaching you how to fish, confidence building, specific NZ methods, whereabouts to fish and what to look out for. NZ is probably different to anything you will have experienced before and if you are short on time then definitely DO get a guide for a couple of days and get HIM to fish and tell you what he is doing. There are plenty of good guides in NZ and they have an organisation (NZFPGA) that I have heard both good and bad things about. A good tackleshop should point you in the right direction and let's face it, if the guide is any good he should have a decent website. If you want me to direct you towards a Guide who will teach you how to fish then talk to madman Deano of Fly Fishing Adventures (Deano wears camouflage and floats down rivers on a rubber duckie).
But taking a guide is not flyfishing, even the guides (if they are honest) will tell you this. If you think that this is flyfishing then you are missing out for two reasons: the first being that much of the total satisfaction that NZ offers is one of complete independence, it is just YOU and the FISH and the other is that guided waters can be high pressure waters; they see a lot of anglers.
Perhaps the best NZ fishing (and certainly the stuff you will be most aware of) is backcountry fishing; fishing some of the most rugged, out of the way spots in the world. Large parts of NZ are wild, untamed and difficult to get at. Steep mountains with toppled down rock faces. Sheer drops and dense bush. And the more impossible the access the better the fishing. These areas are so incredibly beautiful because access is so difficult. There should be places on earth like this; in fact I believe that these are the most important places we have. If and when we finally lose this wilderness we will have lost our most special gift.
Helicopters have no place here. When I get too lazy (or unable) to walk in I will simply stop going. Of course there are other arguments such as, "I'm too busy to go fishing for six months, I've only got 10 days and you haven't even got a job Paul"
"There's a reason for that dude"
Anyway I've pulled the where-to-fish and replaced it with rather a few x's. I think it makes the section even more interesting, it certainly makes it different. I've been fishing New Zealand for the last fourteen years and the more I fish it the less I want to tell you about it. In fact it's not really New Zealand at all; it is in fact Spain.
Cheers,
Paul