Gin clear. That’s how they describe the rivers in New Zealand; gin clear. I suppose that gin clear makes more sense for Kiwis, what with being from British stock, than, say, vodka clear though I prefer vodka, but you get the gist of the thing.
What does gin clear mean? It means you can see fish deep in a six-foot hole. Well, anyway, you can after the guide points it out. That the fish in question is probably at least six pounds and over two feet long helps. Not that you need to fish down to such a depth. The trout in these waters tend to hang out close to the surface. They have no natural predators, no ospreys or cormorants. The only risks I can see in their holding in 18 inches of cold water — other than perhaps sunburn; the ozone is thin down there – are anglers screaming “Oh my God look at the size of that thing” and fainting on them.
I was fishing with my friend Andy, a Kiwi transported to Connecticut, in rivers near Murchison, on New Zealand’s spectacular South Island. I’d been driven up from near Wanaka by my sister-in-law in her Tesla, a bold venture given how few EV chargers there are on the sparsely populated the South Island and all the more so on the coastal route along the Tasman Sea. There were a few moments of Kiwi-esque panic which is to say hardly panic at all, when the battery was running low, and the next charger was almost out of range. I get electric cars, I do. But, hello, a bit of infrastructure, please. At least a very long cord.
The destination was Murchison, a wide spot in an otherwise narrow road, with two of its five eating establishments closed. The fifth was a Chinese place that appeared to be closed, but apparently wasn’t though we were warned by everyone, “Don’t go there.” Whether it was due to bad food or because it was actually a money-laundering front I didn’t bother to find out. We settled on The Cowshed, a simple place with decent food, ample drinks, and several other businesses had a “For Sale” sign nailed to the front. We ate there each of our nights as 1) nothing else was open, and 2) the motel we stayed in only offered microwavable fare but not a microwave oven. “There’s one by the front desk,” said the cheerful manager.
Murchison is surrounded by a vast trout-fishing paradise and in the midst of NZ’s southern alps. Rivers include the Buller, the Matakitaki, the Mangle, the Matiri, and the Owens for starters. You can, of course, get a book and try to figure out how to get to the good spots but if the guides can be believed they’re all pretty much good spots. Most of the rivers flow through private land or dramatic, as well as treacherous, gorges so efficiency begs for someone who knows what’s what, knows where to park, and can lift you over boulders, up cliffsides, and allow you to grasp hold as you cross fast-flowing rivers. This you will do many times over the course of the day.
Our guide, Doug, was both surefooted and large, which was comforting. He looked a bit like John Candy, but nimbler. What was less reassuring was the rumor going around that a few days earlier, Doug was out way out with a client into the evening. Upon returning to his truck, he couldn’t find his keys forcing him and the client to walk many miles until they hit cell-phone coverage and rescue around midnight. I presume he had a second set of keys at home because he did go out the next day, same client, which speaks well of his guiding prowess, or the client having paid in full in advance.
Doug told us he’d pick us up early if we wanted to get going and dutifully arrived 20 minutes late. It wasn’t a big deal, at least he didn’t think so but explained there was some traffic. That was hard to believe. I wasn’t going to challenge him but sure enough there was traffic if hundreds of cows can be called traffic. We were driving down a bumpy farm road when we were forced to a halt as shepherds drove them from one pasture, across said road, to another. I said hundreds but it could have been thousands. I fell asleep counting even though they weren’t sheep of which there is no shortage in NZ.
We must have been there, collecting dust, for a good 20 minutes to which Doug explained that’s why he wanted to get us early. “Yeah. It happens, mate,” he said.
I won’t tell you the name river we went to. Remember, they’re all good. This one was in a wide valley where some entrepreneur was growing rich-looking hops for beer. I guess that’s the only reason people grow hops come to think of it. We pulled in next to a sign of various tracks, trails, going up into the mountains. One of the things that strikes me about New Zealand is how blasé everyone is about everything dangerous. This is the land that started bungee jumping after all. They’ve got bike trails skirting cliffs that have teeny signs politely suggesting you walk. They’ve got teenage bush pilots who fly like they’re on skateboards, the wings of their teeny aircraft jostling maybe 50 yards from the sides of mountains. There’s the chance to paraglide, parasail, without mention of paramedics. In the US you’d have to waive all rights to do any of this if it was allowed. In NZ, it’s “suit yourself.”
The signpost where we parked had warnings about dangerous conditions up in the mountains. It offered sage advice, “Use your judgment.” While showing illegibly faded maps of some of the tracks, what struck me was that one track that led 40 km up to a hut, a gain of 1,000 meters in 2 km, then went on if you wanted deeper into the wild. How deep it didn’t tell as the track went past where the map ended.
Kiwis are pleased to tell you their country is not Australia. Doug wasn’t the only person we met who boasted of no poisonous snakes, or spiders, no bears or mountain lions. He did caution that there’s this tiny thing called a sand fly and advised bug spray and a lot of it.
That started Doug on one of his many jokes. “I was in a fly shop the other day and saw rolls of chicken wire against the wall. I said, ‘Oy Mate, what’s the chicken wire doing in a fly shop? You know what he tells me? He tells me it’s sand fly netting!” Lame jokes always sound better coming from a guide on a river, don’t they? And stale sandwiches taste better, too.
I was getting myself ready for wet wading – no waders – and putting my rod together when those buggers struck. Little bastards they are, sort of like Maine black flies, but more resentful. These things left bloody welts wherever they bit. DEET worked fine until it didn’t. A few hours and then the effect wore off but by then the wind picked up. Call it synergy.
With that wind, my casting skill kicked in. In New Zealand, you use long leaders, very long leaders. Doug insisted on a 16-foot 5x which is nearly double what I’m used to back in the Northeast. Casting well is hard enough. Casting well with a lot of line is a harder. Casting a lot of line with a 16-foot leader delicately, yet with precision, with a gusty wind echoing off the walls of the valley is well, a nightmare, especially with a very big guide yelling in your ear, “You’re ten feet to his right, five feet below him.” The words “You Yankee wanker” are implied.
For fish that have no natural predators, I’m not sure why they spook so readily from the mere shadow of a fly line or a delicate splash of a fly, but they do. Doug advised that I had to land the fly a few feet directly above the fish, in line with the current, so it would drift naturally over its head. We were hunting fish and needed sharpshooter accuracy.
On our local streams, I’d cast a fly over a feeding trout a bunch of times, change it if there was no take, and repeat. In New Zealand the fish seem to be smarter. It was two, maybe three, casts then we’d change the depth of the fly by a few inches and if no take move on. We used mostly nymphs and generic ones at that, small brown things, maybe with a gold rib, and a teeny wing. It was a simple pattern, easy to tie, with a bit of a bead. Think of a pheasant tail or hare and copper with a slight wing on it. The wing extended about 1/3 of the shaft, close to the body. Doug used a tungsten bead not so much for the depth as to get it down in the fast currents. Size? We used 14s to 18s mostly.
While I describe the nymphs as generic, the slight variation of the wing gave it a distinction, Doug’s Special.
What was really a Doug Special was a way of tying on the indicator and the indicator itself. New Zealanders use wool, as one would expect in a country of 60,000,000 sheep, or yarn. The wool is grabbed off fences sheep rub against, and works especially well since it’s both free and has lanolin; a natural flotant. Doug’s Special entailed making a simple loop, then a second loop, and inserting the second through the first. Into that, you place the wool and tighten. When you want to move the wool up or down to adjust for depth, you just remove the wool, pull on the leader, and start over. Easy peasy.
(When I mentioned this method to fisher friends back home I got an “Oh yeah” as if they’d been doing it for years, which they hadn’t because they’ve asked me to demonstrate it several times.)
I’m envious of guides. Despite my polarized sunglasses and decent observational skills, I can’t see the fish like they do. Doug would say, “There, behind that white rock!” and I’d respond with “Which white rock?” followed by “You’re lying! You’re doing that guide thing to make me think I’m the idiot!!!”
With Doug using my rod as a pointer I might see the fish, or the rock, and cast somewhere else entirely. I do that to get the right amount of line out and test the wind conditions. Some might say I just didn’t know where to cast; there are a lot of white rocks out there.
Eventually I got the fly close to where intended. Doug would whisper, “Watch the indicator,” and when it went down the whisper would be a barking order, “NOW!” I admit I didn’t see all the fish, but the yarn indicator is both sensitive and visible and I was, usually always, intimidated by his barking.
The take from one fish was subtle, more subtle than you’d expect from a 5 ½ brown but all subtlety was gone the moment I lifted the rod. That fish tore across the wide river as I let it run. We followed it downstream inevitably not keeping the rod high enough as I scrambled over loose boulders, but held onto it nonetheless. Doug was further downstream, net in hand, commanding me to reel in when things went slack, let it go when it ran, and slowly lead it to the bank. Just when I finally saw it – OMG it was big – that fish saw the net and took off again and again. In my head I was thinking what if it broke the 5x tippet, what if a #16 nymph was too small to hold the beast; could I at least count it as a catch?
Finally, both of us exhausted, the brown was ushered into the net. It would be the first of several that day but, you know, you never forget the first time. I got to lift it for a photo, its hooked jaw chomping at the air as it wrestled for its freedom. And being a loyal catch-and-release man, I swayed it back and forth in the water to revive it and let it go.
We all know trout have teeth. We’ve seen the photos in the magazines of smiling anglers holding fish in front of them to make the it seem larger. Let me tell you this fish had teeth that hurt as it chomped down when I went to extract the fly. When I tried to hold it forth to make it seem larger in a photo, between its weight and flopping I could barely hold on. Suffice it to say from tip to tail the fish was wider than my shoulders.
Or maybe not, but we’re fisherman; we exaggerate.
Andy and I leapfrogged fishing. He caught two and I caught two more fish before we broke for lunch, each within a ½ pound of the first. I’m happy to say that I was getting better at seeing a shadow in the water that Doug insisted was a fish and not a sunken log I otherwise would have ignored.
Lunch was more a chance to douse on bug spray than enjoy fine dining. We talked about fishing, politics, family, and rods. I had two rods; one a high-end 9’ 5wt I got as a 65th birthday gift from my buddy Eric, the other a New Zealand creation, an Epic glass 7’6” 4 wt I’d acquired because he was cheap, came with line and a reel, and a nice case that held two rods. That the woman in the factory store was also quite attractive and perhaps a tad flirtatious may have added to the allure of the deal. I say flirtatious but I mean that in a fishing way. When I cast the rod she said, “Oh, very good,” “You handle that well. Impressive!” Who could refuse?
I’ve got fish on that rod in New England where a 12-inch brookie warrants mounting. My Epic is not like the old glass rods that we’re quite slow, meek really, and felt flimsy. This one was slow compared to graphite, but powerful and I could, I boast, cast it quite well even with NZ length leaders. Doug called it a toy. I called it a tool. Who was right would soon be tested.
When lunch came to an end I edged off into the bushes for a pee. As I did my business, Doug yelled out, “Oy, that’s a felony here!” The limited trickle of a 66-year old came to an abrupt end and I was thankful we were wet wading so any residual drops would wash away. I figured the Kiwis were so protective of the water that one had to go off well into the bush to pee. I asked him about the laws.
“Yeah, mate, we’re very strict about an old man playing with a little boy’s pecker!!!”
We continued upstream, well off the river to avoid spooking fish, and crossed several times following in Doug’s wake as he scouted ahead. We lost sight of him as he zipped ahead but caught up soon enough. He’d be standing, staring, into the water which was a clear signal he saw something. We scrambled to meet him. It was Andy’s turn to cast at which point he let off a fart. Nothing offensive, to be sure, but loud enough to be heard over the rising wind through the valley. Doug continued to keep his eye on a big something in the water though had the wherewithal to tell Andy, “Give her some choke and she’ll start right up!”
Anyway, Andy caught the fish, another 6 pounder, which apparently wasn’t bothered by the flatulence.
We tramped further up the river following Doug as he gazed into the water, stopped, and moved on. What came to my mind were rivers in Montana that boast thousands of fish every mile or so, a statistic I never trusted, still don’t. There were far fewer in these rivers, that’s for sure, though pound for aggregated pound, they would give Montana competition. “Eight and a half,” Doug would say to a dark spot. He pronounced “half” as “hoff.” That particular fish was spooked when my line splashed over it. “Idiot bastard,” said Doug. I think he meant the fish.
The trek did allow me to register nearly 8,000 steps and we still had to go back at some point.
It was at 10,000 that he held his hand out to stop me. “There,” he said. This time I saw it, swaying gently in the current, a few feet behind a trio of rocks. “Get the toy,” said Mark. “Let’s see what she can do. Oh, and if you manage to hook this, let it run. It’s big.”
Despite the wind, despite my doubts about this itty bitty of a rod on a big fish in a big river, I cast the16 ft leader landing the yarn indicator just ahead of the fish. It couldn’t have landed better. And when the indicator went under I was a split second of Doug’s “Now!” The trout took off upstream, the reel offering a heart-racing “whrrrr” and line peeled out. Then it edged downstream, and I reeled in. Then up again, then down, then between rocks, then over to me. There’s a photo of me taken by Andy of a near perfect bend protecting that tippet, the bend starting at my feet curving over my legs and back, up to my arms and through the straining rod. After leading it to the bank, into the waiting net, my puny toy had landed a 6 ¼ pound brown, not as long as an earlier one, but all the fatter for the weight. Toy indeed.
There are days when nothing goes right; you feel like a heel and head for YouTube bookmarks and browse flyrod reviews to see if, maybe, it’s the equipment, not you.
Then there are days like these. You roll out that 16 ft leader smoothly. The indicator lands just where it’s supposed, drifts down the feeding lane, and you lift the rod one micro send before the guide screams at you. You play the fish perfectly into the net, hold it for the briefest moment and are doubly rewarded with both the fish and a sincere “well done” from a Doug.
