Rods

River Rods: Most of the rivers in New Zealand can be successfully fished with a 6 or 7 weight rod. The only rod length needed is 2.75 metres (9 ft). Even when the wind gets up, a 7 weight line will still enable fishing to continue between gusts. While 8 weight rods are popular on the bigger rivers like the Tongariro, they can be rather tiring by the end of a long day. Unless you are going to fish all day with heavily-weighted `bombs', a 7 weight will do fine. A medium-to-fast action can be an advantage as it means less time spent aerial casting and more time for the line on the water. The most common rod in New Zealand would be one that can carry a 6 or 7 weight line. With the lighter line, it is possible to fish to wary brown trout and the heavier line will come in handy when the wind gets up, as it often does in this country.

Stream Rods: Here is where a greater variety of fishing tools comes into play. The delicacy of the water to be fished and the `spookiness' of the fish must be taken into consideration. For New Zealand fishing, the selection is usually between a 4, 5 or 6 weight outfit. The 6 weight would probably be the most common choice. If you only could afford one rod, then a six weight would enable you to fish both rivers and reasonably small streams. You might struggle when the wind sprang up or if the conditions needed heavy flies. At the other end of the scale, you would need to know how to deliver a parachute cast to be able to land the fly gently on delicate waters with a 6 weight line. Most modern rods can cast one line weight either side of that shown on the rod so it might be just as easy to buy a 5 weight line and use that on the 6 weight rod. The only disadvantage with this ploy is if you will be doing a lot of short-line work or roll casting. In that situation, the lighter line does not get the rod flexing as it was designed to and that can be frustrating. If a lot of roll casting is anticipated, it is actually better to put a heavier line onto a lighter rod e.g. a 6 weight line on a 5 weight rod. It is necessary with such a rig, not to fully complete the forward part of the roll cast or the line will land too heavily on the water. However `overlining' like this is not recommended if a lot of distance casting is required. The heavier line will lead to stress on the rod when more than ten metres is aerialised.

Lake Okataina Click for full view

The action of the stream rod depends on whether it will be used for dry fly or nymphing. For dry fly fishing, I prefer a slower-actioned rod, which will deliver the fly more gently onto the water. For nymph fishing, a fast action rod works better as it reduces the amount of false casting. It also tends to punch more effectively through the wind, which is a decided advantage on many New Zealand waters, especially in those areas subject to nor'westers. However, if most of your fishing is to visible fish, then the slower-actioned rod will be best for both dry and nymph fishing, as the flies in that situation, will generally be small. If you are mainly blind fishing, especially with double fly rigs, then the fast taper rod performs better.

For those who do a lot of tramping when fishing, a four-piece pack rod in the same weight is very handy. When backpacking, I don't use the aluminium tube that usually comes with such rods but prefer a lightweight plastic document tube available from most office supply shops. The weight saved is considerable and means you can take in an extra spool or fly box. One local rod manufacturer makes a three piece rod and this is very useful for carrying onto planes, avoiding the risk of damage in the cargo hold.

Lines

New Zealand trout are often spooky as they live in very clear water. Bright coloured lines can tend to scare them so the best line is a dark or neutral coloured one. I use a mid grey colour line for most of my fishing.

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Typical Techniques

Downstream Nymphing

One of the best ways of finding the fish in spawning rivers is to walk up to the upper pools and then to nymph downstream until you find the pocket of running fish. However this is not `downstream nymphing' where you fish with a sinking line. Instead you fish with a floating line. The idea is to start at the top of a pool or reach and cast your nymph across to the far bank. You then walk your nymph downstream matching the speed of the current. Because the footing is all even shingle and not slippery, you can very easily walk your nymph down the length of the pool. If, at any stage, you get some drag occurring, just recast and resume your walk. In this way you can fish through an entire pool in a few minutes. If you find fish in the pool, retreat to the tail of the pool and slowly work your way up, nymphing upstream in the customary manner. If you have no strikes on the way down through the pool, you can fairly safely assume there are no `schools' of fish in that particular pool. You can them wade across the tail and start working your way down the next pool or run.

When you finally start to strike fish, stay in that pool until the fishing goes `off' meaning that the fish have probably moved onto the next pool up. Contrary to what you expect, you will not scare the fish as the TT rainbows all tend to hide under the blackberry on the far bank and so are quite insulated from your quiet stroll downstream. The other advantage of fishing down is that you can wade deeper as you are not trying to fight the current as you would have to when working up the river. This enables you to cast a shorter line and have it more under control as you steer it under or around the projections on the far bank.

Adjusting to Different Depths

The largest New Zealand trout are often to be found deep in the large pools. They can be easily seen but getting down to them in the turbulent current can be difficult. It is then necessary to adjust one's terminal tackle. My fishing success had improved a lot when I learned to adapt my rig to the depth and speed of the water. As this changes, so you have to change your tackle. This may involve changing the leader length to suit the depth of the water and changing your fly weight to suit the speed of the current. The quickest way of changing your leader length is just to move your indicator. The shallower the fish is lying; the nearer your indicator should be to your fly.

Similarly, the easiest way of adapting to the speed of the current is to change the weight of your fly. For years, I have preferred to do this through the use of a sinker fly with a small, more-likely-to-be-taken fly attached to the bend of the larger hook. If the fish is lying deep, then he is unlikely to be put off by the larger fly and it is surprising just how often a fish will take the larger fly by preference. Generally rainbows tend to be more prone to do this, but often a big brown will be tempted by a large stonefly, sometimes when all else has failed. As soon as you come to shallower stretches, it is a simple matter to remove the double rig and tie on a single small fly.

On a river with a wide variety of water, you will need to make changes quite often. If you have been fishing a fast but shallow riffle and the pool at the top is a large deep one, then there is no success to be had from leaving on your effectively short leader and lightly-weighted flies. Unless the fish are holding high in the pool, they will be unlikely to come up for your fly. It is necessary to lengthen the leader and change to a weighted fly. Your success rate is bound to improve if you keep putting the fly at the exact depth at which the fish are lying. This is not `rocket science'; just plain common sense.

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Downstream Mending - how to fish back swirls

Brown trout often do not lie in the heart of the pools, even if the pool is a slow one. Their favourite trick is to lie in the back swirl of the pool. Here they can sit in comparative comfort with the main flow whizzing past them while the gentle back flow brings plenty of food without much expenditure of energy. Trout are very energy conscious and this back swirl lie is a typical example of how they will seek out the most efficient position to balance food source and energy use.

I had encountered similar positioning by browns in the Mohaka River some years ago. One early Mohaka excursion, I remember working my way up from the Waipunga confluence and reaching the cliffs that you have to sidle around to get further up the river. Where the full force of the river met the base of the cliffs, the river cannoned off and charged down the centre of the valley. At the edge was left a swirl of water that made its way back upstream to the head of the pool. I tried to fish the seam where the fast water met the slow but the nymph was either swept down the river or went nowhere in the back swirl Getting frustrated that I could not get the drift I wanted, I pulled the line out of the fast water and let it dangle in the slower water. The fly line started to come upstream towards me, brought up by the back swirling flow to the top of the pool.

As the fly came near to me, I lifted the rod to recast. The rod got about halfway up and stopped. I was into a fish. But only briefly. The unexpected take took me by surprise and the fish was not well-hooked. The fly came back to me fishless. But I had found a new way of catching fish. I moved up to the next pool, which was similar to the one I had just fished. Armed with this new insight, I cast down river into the back swirl that was heading towards me. Good theory, but nothing happened. Then, on the second time through, the indicator seemed to hesitate just as it reached the head of the pool. I wasn't sure what was happening but I lifted the rod, more in hope than in expectation, to find myself fast into another brown. This 2.5 kg fish was safely landed and I had a new arrow in my fish-fighting techniques quiver.

Lake Aniwenua Click for full view

The main problem with this tactic is that the take tends to come at the top of the back swirl If the fish takes part of the way up the back swirl, then it is just like a normal drift and you strike to the stopping of the indicator. When nothing happens before the fly reaches the point where the current starts to go downstream again, then you're in trouble. The fly line tends to swim around at the top of the back swirl, going nowhere in particular and it is virtually impossible to detect a take. You do tend to fluke a few, but they are often poorly-hooked and a lost fish is likely. In addition, you may look a bit silly to a fellow nympher watching you from the far bank as you are facing down the river instead of up. But when you lift the rod on a big brown, you can flash them a knowing look.

It is necessary to do something similar if you want to fish up the back swirl and back down again. As the fly swings around and starts going back down the pool, it is necessary to get the line out of the water that is going in a different direction. You need to roll cast a metre of line ahead of the indicator to get the nymph moving back down and not just sitting motionless in the middle of the backswirl.Once the fly starts trucking down the edge of the main current, it is a matter of keeping the belly of the fly line away from the water flowing in the wrong direction. If the seam water is not more than 3-4 metres away, you can do this by just lifting your rod and all the line off the water.

This leaves only the 50 cm `bow' of your line near the indicator on the water. You should then follow the movement of the indicator with your rod. When the rod has reached its full arm-length reach, you can feed some more line through the rings to get another metre or two of dead drift. In a back swirling pool, the line will start coming back upstream towards you and you can retrieve line as you would with a normal drift. It all sounds complicated but once you master the downstream mend, you can fish a pool both up and down with one cast - and a few mends.

Extracts from:
Hooked on Trout - how & where to catch large trout in New Zealand,
by Ron Giles, published by Reed NZ