Some say that if you don’t know where you
are going, any road will get you there. I think I have followed
just about every road in my search for a big brown trout. Well
that is not quite correct, I have found big brown trout,
but catching the brutes, now there is a matter that
stirs recollection of lost chances.
Still I suppose that waiting and fish are an inseparable
couple. It took me forty years to the day of catching my first
fly rod trout to finally land a ten-pound rainbow. It is now way
past forty years of catching browns, and still a big fish would
not succumb to my temptations.
Well, and again, not quite true. Regularly my temptations
proved very enticing indeed. Hooking big browns and landing them,
now there is plenty of room for slips between cup and lip. There
are too many slips in this big brown trout chasing career to bear
much examination if any notion of my being at least a part way
competent fisherman is to be retained.
The list of self-induced disasters is long. Standing
on loose coils of line is a well-practiced catastrophe. A loose
coil of line wrapped around the reel proved a good standby when
my feet for once were out of the line of fire. Over-excitement
at the sight of a big fish in the shallows and the mad panic to
land it usually guaranteed a hook pull or leader failure. Going
on down the list would fill this page and more. Still these little
moments of silliness did teach me something. No amount of obscenity-tossing
at the tail of a retreating fish will make it turn from its chosen
course.
In the Central North Island of New Zealand, brown trout
are not the fish of the crystal-clear streams of the South Island.
There they are skittish creatures that bolt at the flicker of an
angler’s eye-lash. Trout that can only be tempted by tiny flies tossed
by an angler with a University Degree in stealth. Trout that once
hooked, flash and slash across the water, in their frantic efforts
to escape.
In the North, browns often reach almost mythical
status; creatures of deep dark pools, or denizens of the night.
Most in the North will fish for browns in the dark, at night,
or deep into black pools. Fish that if hooked, dog down deep using
slow, steady, brute force to out-muscle their foe.
Some brown addicts will seek their prey in summer,
in the late hot afternoon, along a lake’s edge. Sometimes fish
can be spotted and fished to as they cruise along the weed beds
near shore, feasting on tiny tidbits. Others will fish the streams
and rivers over summer, stalking the fish in mimic of their southern
brothers.
Too hard for most, many northern browns are hooked
by anglers fishing for their more colourful cousins.
In January through to March browns will migrate
from the dark depths and congregate near stream and river
mouths feasting on smelt, nymphs and floating insects,
bloating themselves to build for the rigors of spawning from March through till
around July. They wait for whatever signal pushes their buttons, and then fat and heavy
off up the river they go.
Fish that move in the night, usually late at night.
On calm summer nights browns often betray their presence by sound. Out
there in the blackness a large thumping splosh, like someone has
thrown a brick in the water, is a good clue. The guys in the rip
at the river mouth will tell you, and they certainly tell each
other, "big rainbow out there smelting." But that is
a different sound, more of a splash than a splosh.
Another sound that testifies to the presence of
browns is a kind of slurping thump. The sound a cup makes when
it is pulled under the water with the opening to the top of the
water.
Anglers can be given clues to the presence of browns
by touch. Those fishing well to the side of the rip will report
"a touch". A plucking touch, the merest tiny pull on
the fly, sometimes one or two little touches in quick succession,
and then nothing. Sometimes the pluck turns into a dead stop on
the line and the rainbow trained angler rears back on the rod
to set the hook, the rod bucks, comes up solid against a trembling
taunt line, and then nothing. Usually no hook or leader. Brownies
are about!
And so they were, just three days ago, (end Feb.
1997). Three days preceded by five days of clear blue skies and
temperatures in the mid-twenties. Hot enough to warm the lake
shore water. Tepid enough to attract shoals of smelt. Warm enough
to fill the evening air with swarms of moths and cicadas.
As darkness fell the cool water in the centre of
the lake pulled in the outlying air setting up a strong off-shore
wind. A wind that concentrated moths and cicadas, and smelt at
the far reaches of the current from the rip. The night was moonless
black. Perfect brown trout fishing conditions.
At half-ten I wandered down to the rip, and watched
the eight or nine anglers across the rip (where the river current spills into the lake)
catching a few rainbows, and then encouraged by the "big rainbows smelting way out"
I wandered down the lake edge for 70 or more metres. I waded out
to where John was standing. John is the only name I know for this
man I have fished alongside many times, but never in light strong
enough to recognize him in the daytime.
A longish cast, the off-shore wind helped, dropped
the tandem flies of a silicone smelt with a luminous core, followed
by my secret fly, near the very tail of the rip, where it was
joined by a back current generated by the rip. For a half-hour
or more it was lake fishing as usual; cast, slowly retrieve and
little else. A couple of rainbows of thin still mending condition
came and went back. Then around a bit past eleven the sploshing
started, and one or two plucks confirmed some impending action.
It did not take long.
My line cast out, and only one or two pulls into
the retrieve I felt a little pluck, another, and then things got
solid. I waded the long careful backward wade to the beach followed
by the docile but heavy fish. Nearing the beach the fish decided
enough was enough and took off back to the deeper water. The loping
run, hard along the lakebed. signaled a good brown. Eventually
he turned, and a couple or three shorter runs I had him flopping
on the beach. Beautiful big brown fish. Good enough to mount I
excitedly thought. The scales proved otherwise, just eight and
a bit pound, but still by some way my biggest brown to-date, so back he went. A
very good fish, but not yet my ten-pound brown bogey broken.
The next night I was on the lake same time, same
place. This time I had much more company. Five or six anglers
lined up around me, not counting the eight or nine in the rip.
Word travels fast around those parts.
A few casts and then the line just came up tight.
The fly had only just hit the water, and I was only just into
the first pull. No dashing run, just a stubborn slow pull as the
fish headed out into the lake. No screaming reel, just the rapid
ticking of the ratchet.
Finally the fish slowed and turned, and winding
in line slowly I waded cautiously backward towards the beach.
Halfway back the fish ran again, more urgently this time, but
deep and strong. Again it slowed and turned and I continued back
toward the beach. Once on the beach I started to get some line
back. Slowly very slowly, a few turns at a time. The fish was
heavy. I could feel that. Every now and then it would make a half
turn and run along parallel to the shore. But slowly and very
carefully I moved it closer to the beach. Soon it was only a metre
or so from the beach.
That revealed a new problem. Just off the beach
was a lip of shingle, maybe a foot deep. Every-time the fish neared
the lip it bolted, only a metre or so but enough to start me panicking.
By now I knew the fish was big, the boils of water proved what
the weight on the rod hinted at. But I could not move the fish
over the damned lip. I tried moving back into the water, to attempt
to kick the fish up over the lip and onto the beach, but this
only scared the fish. By now I was very worried about the seven-pound
leader I was using and that the hook might pull. All the usual
near the end of long fight fears.
Help was at hand from an unexpected source. Somewhere
out on the lake one of the big sightseeing catamarans had passed
by and its wake began to hit the beach. I maneuvered the fish
close to the lip and using as much force as I dared lifted the
fish over the lip in sync with a wake wave. There it flopped,
a big, very big brown hen. Bigger than the night before. "You
bloody beaut," I saluted the brown.
Photos taken, and the scales pulled down to ten pound six ounces, I let
the fish swim away with a ‘what the hell was that’ look on her face.
Another bogey broken. Another fishing objective
finally met. So what is next? A ten pound rainbow, done that.
Ten pound brown, done.
Just the other day I learned of a little lake very
close at hand that holds reasonable stocks of brook trout. There
is my ‘next’. Fishing for me is a constantly evolving set of objectives.
For me fishing is much like most things, where success is not
a destination, it is a journey. But I don t think I can wait forty
years for a decent brook trout, I probably have not got that much
time left.
Although there are some who some reckon that every
day spent fishing is added to your allotted life span. If this
is true, then given the amount of fishing I have done, and do,
then I could live to about 120. But then, looking back at the
time it has taken for me to reach some of my fishing objectives,
I may well have to.