Saturday Dec. 1st Fishing with Kevin

Today I met up with one of my South Island guides and went out for a short day of fishing. Being a Saturday and his only day off after many days working, we left later than normal and also I was spending the majority of the morning dealing with problems at home with frozen pipes back in Montana, according to my friend, house and pet sitter. So I dealt with how she should handle frozen pipes and also a last minute New Zealand booking for a client who was actually on his way to the airport as we spoke this morning! So off to a late start, but it was still a good productive day albeit a rather chilly one. We were freezing!!! Kevin and I decided to wade wet since the sun was out and it looked like a nice day...BUT as the day progressed, the weather “turned to custard” as they say down here and it got cold and cloudy and a little windy. Just enough to feel chilled to the bone, wearing shorts and wet wading. Brrr.... not a good idea today. Hopefully tomorrow won’t be the same as today’s weather. It’s not supposed to be, but this area is much like Montana in that the weather can change at the drop of a dime.

Nonetheless, we still had a good day of fishing and I caught some nice fat brown trout.




No matter where you are in New Zealand, you are never more than 60 miles from the coast, so weather can change quite rapidly which is what happened today. This was not in the forecast so we’ll see how they do tomorrow. I go out with a different guide tomorrow to a different river.

After such warm weather this entire trip, and beautiful sunny days, today was actually the first day I felt cold and not just cold but chilled to the bone. I haven’t been able to get warm all day so I came home and jumped in the shower and stood under the hot water for ages until I thawed. I don’t think it was actually that cold, but the relative humidity was high so it felt really cold. Coming from such a dry climate, it felt colder to me than if I was home in 20 degrees F.

So, a new report once I see how things go tomorrow. Unfortunately, I’m once again in an area with no internet connection and I’m not set up this trip to do dial up on my laptop so I’m at the mercy of other people’s computers to go online to do anything, This post may have to wait a few days to go up but at least I’m writing it now while it’s fresh in my mind.

OK...off to bed now. It’s 2:21AM in Montana now and I only have two more days to go so I should try to start getting closer to my old time clock as it will make for an easier adjustment when I go back home.

Ciao for now.

Riverview Lodge Hanmer Springs

Wow, what a view from this place! The Southern Alps in the background and all the colors of spring...pretty magnificent. Too bad the fishing couldn't have been as good. I guess we're not in Motu anymore, Toto!!!

Today John and I walked what seemed like an eternity over river rocks and didn't see a whole lot of fish. On top of that, the weather has changed a bit here heading into the mountains and the wind blew all day from the minute I got up this morning until now and I believe it's still howling out there. Ever try casting a flyrod directly into gale force winds? it's not pretty, let me tell you. At times my cast came back right at me and tried to wack me in the face. This is not my idea of fun and it's not at all like Motu where there are fish everywhere and you can SEE THEM!!!!! OK...enough whining. We only saw three fish and I hooked two of them and landed one...albeit a rather smallish one, but it was a sea run brown so it was feisty and different to look at. Better than nothing I reckon...although the pesky sand flies are not much fun to deal with...that's a fact of life on the west coast of the South Island though and you just have to be prepared with bug stuff which we were.



When we returned to the lodge, Robin had a pleasant surprise in store for me. We took a run into Hanmer Springs and she had a pass for us each to take a soak in the hot pools and have a Swedish Massage, which was absolutely delightful. It saved the day as far as I was concerned.... that was a very nice surprise and then we came home to the most elegant and gourmet dinner. They have hired a chef from Germany for the season as well as another person from Switzerland to serve and help out. They did a great job and the chef is quite talented.


Tomorrow I have all day to drive all of two hours so I can take my time and maybe go back into Hanmer Springs and look around in the shops. Not much was open today as it is Sunday,

Ciao for now...I'm heading for bed.

Wednesday Motu

Tomorrow we are off to the Ruakitori River for the largest rainbows to be had in all of New Zealand. It’s also the eastern most rainbow trout fishery in the country. Frank owns a cabin on the Ruakitori, knicknamed the Ruakitori Hilton. I have high hopes for a big rainbow tomorrow. We’ll spend the night in Gisborne tomorrow night and then I’ll have a town day on Friday while I’m waiting to fly down to Christchurch on the South Island Friday afternoon. It will be Thanksgiving Day in the US. If I don’t get my next blog written in time, Happy Thanksgiving Everyone!

Ciao for now.....

Wednesday Motu

Today was another beautiful day on the Motu. We headed out to a different section than where we fished on Tuesday in search of some big brownies. Well, we found them allright. I had a cast at a nice fish sitting in a rather precarious spot with a stump just to the right and in front of him and a willow tree to the left and another big snag in the middle. The chances of landing this trout were not good to say the least. Well, I had to have a try, so with just one perfect cast, I hooked the trout which exploded into action and I had a good tug of war to keep him out of all the snags which seemed to be everywhere. I percervered and managed to land a beautiful 8-9 pound brown trout. What a beauty!

The day went on with much the same, casting to large trout. Sometimes I was fortunate enough to land them and sometimes not. I did catch some beauties though and here are a few pics of them.


Tomorrow we are off to the Ruakituri River for the largest rainbows to be had in all of New Zealand. It’s also the eastern most rainbow trout fishery in the country. Frank owns a cabin on the Ruakituri, knicknamed the Ruakituri Hilton. I have high hopes for a big rainbow tomorrow. We’ll spend the night in Gisborne tomorrow night and then I’ll have a town day on Friday while I’m waiting to fly down to Christchurch on the South Island Friday afternoon. It will be Thanksgiving Day in the US. If I don’t get my next blog written in time, Happy Thanksgiving Everyone!

Ciao for now.....

Te Kaha to Motu

On Monday morning, my friend Frank, a lodge owner, met me in Te Kaha and we drove back to Motu by way of the Waioeka River so we could have a flick of the old fly rod enroute. The rivers are somewhat low but clear as a bell so we saw lots of trout and I managed to hook 4 nice trout and land NONE! Oh well, we will be fishing the evening rise tonight on the Motu so I guess I can wait! After a nice dinner with some of New Zealand's premier Sauvignon Blancs and Pinot Noir, we headed out around 8:00 pm for the evening rise. There is a good caddis hatch here on the Motu as well as various and assorted mayflies. This is a clay bedded stream so no stone flies found here.

The evening rise got off to a slowish start but as it grew darker and darker, the fish were really starting to feed and I finally redeemed myself and caught a nice brown trout before it got too dark to recognize what it was.

Today, Tuesday, we spent the day on the Motu. This is a heavily regulated river on the north island between Gisborne and Opotiki and is all, for the most part, on private land which Frank has exclusive rights to fish. This is all farm land with beautiful green pastures full of sheep, cows, BULLS!!! and the most beautiful slow meandering stream running through it all. It's easy walking, wading and spotting since there are high banks on one side and gravel bars on the other. The easy way to do this with a guide is for the guide to be on the high bank spotting the fish and you are on the opposite side of the river casting to the fish as he tells you where it is and you are best to spot the fish first before casting.

This river is insanely full of trout. Today alone just in one beat, we counted easily over 100 fish and all brownies. Mostly in the 4-7 pound range. I managed to hook about 10 fish or so and landed about 6. I'm not going to say how many I totally missed because they got spooked. Then there are the three or so that were nice big fish and wrapped the leader around a log and got off. Geez these are smart fish!



Tonight we'll go out for the evening rise again and then tomorrow we have new water to fish and will go play with the rainbows.

The Perfect Te Kaha Day

Ah, the weather couldn't have been nicer today. We headed out to the kingfish hot spot to jig for big kingies. After losing four rather expensive lures to barracuda, we finally landed some lnice kingfish. The fish they refer to as kingfish here are what we refer to as California yellowtail which we fish for on the Sea of Cortez in Baja. Our fish don't get nearly as big as the kingfish get here. We landed two, the first being around 20 pounds and the big one weighing in around 42 or so pounds. A respectble fish for sure and excellent eating. Paul was the hero of the day landing the big one.

Now that we'd lost our big jigs and growing weary of the barracuda that were plaguing us, we decided to head to a new spot for Terakihi for dinner. Now it was Lee who was the hero of the day. All in all, we landed about 11 Terakihi for our fish and chips meal tonight. Terakihi is my favorite food fish of New Zealand with a delicate but sweet flavor.

OK, now we know we have enough food for a respectable feed but we're not finished yet! Next we headed off to the rocks that were visible at low tide to dive for green lip mussels and paua (abalone). Oh and lets not forget the crayfish! Lee was our diver of the day and came back with his bag full of mussels, paua and crays. Wow, this is going to be some feast tonight!