After we celebrated Zach's birthday in Queenstown, we slowly made our way back up to Christchurch to get Zach back in time for his flight back home. We made a few pit stops along the way. We took the long way home and stopped in Mossburn to fish that area once more as well as indulge in a meat pie from the local cafe in town. If you ever get a chance to get to Mossburn, get a pie from the cafe across the street from the Four Square Super Market. They sell chicken and venison pies served with an apricot and plum sauce. We've had a ridiculous amount of pies while in New Zealand and this one takes the cake. Congrats to them as they have truly outdone themselves. We camped by the Aparima River just south of Mossburn and started walking up the river that next morning. We didn't see a single fish, even in the areas that we had spotted fish on previous trips to this river. After about a km or two, we see the aggravating site of fly line floating through the air ahead of us. We immediately gave up on spotting fish and cruised up to this lone fisherman to find a woman flinging a double nymph rig in a not so type loop and slapping the water ahead. I yelled with a chuckle, "No wonder we weren't seeing any fish...!" She turned and we started chatting. She was very hospitable and said there might be two guys up ahead of her but she wasn't sure. She offered to let us walk up ahead but etiquette is etiquette and we told her that she was there first and that the water was hers. Bummed, but glad we saw her as soon as we did, we walked back to the car to drive to some different water. It turned from nice, clear skies to clouds in what seemed like a matter of minutes which really screwed our next fishing venture up considerably. The Hamilton Burn, which is a difficult river at this time of year anyway became impossible to fish with little to no visibility. So, after a couple more pies, we cruised down to the section of the Oreti River that flows through town and parked by the river. Since we had just recently acquired a fresh case of beer we decided to test out some brand new Speights coozies we bought and put down a few drafts. We came up with this game to make things interesting. The game consisted of us going through our own iPods and playing artists that we didn't know. If the other person recognized the song, the person playing the song had to chug the rest of his beer. This game didn't last very long because, unfortunately, a while back, I acquired the Top Gun soundtrack as well as one of those infomercial Best of the 80's albums with a bunch of really popular 80's songs by a bunch of one hit wonders that I have never heard of. Needless to say, I had two beers down pretty quickly and the game ended about as soon as it began. The fishing was obviously a bust due to inclement weather as well as a fuzzy brain from our beer consumption. One was obviously caused by the other.
We also stopped in Gore to check out some water there, but the weather continued to be crap and we decided to count our losses and continue onto the east coast to say that we saw it. We did stop and take the necessary photos of the giant brown trout, considering Gore is the "World Capital of Brown Trout Fishing".
We drove through Dunedin and decided to make one detour to a river near Fairlie to spend the next day fishing. The fishing was pretty good, or at least we saw plenty of fish. We tried hard to get Zach into one more fish before he departed but it wasn't in the cards that day. I ended up hooking into two fish and blew one more opportunity. Both fish were good looking fish in the 4-5 lb range that took a nymph dropper.
 |
| This was quite the acrobatic jack. |
We made it up a decent ways and would've loved to continue on as the weather was really good up to this point. However, a brutal north westerly wind, or, norwester to the locals kicked up and essentially made casting impossible. When casting an 18-20 foot leader, that head wind can really mess things up in a hurry. We headed back to the car through the treacherous wading conditions of this particular river. There were deep, swift crossings as well as big, bowling ball sized slippery rocks to try and maneuver over without busting your ass.
Once back at the car, we cheers one last celebratory beer as that was Zach's last day of fishing while in New Zealand. We packed up the rods and organized some gear before we made our last plunge towards Christchurch as the fearsome twosome. As I said my good byes to Zach, I immediately started planning my next route to tackle alone. The compass pointed northwest. Murchison was my next stop. I had only two weeks of fishing left and I wanted to make sure they were memorable. Updates will follow.
No comments:
Post a Comment