For some fishing writers – the ones who write
monthly columns at least – coming up with a subject for an article can
be something of an occasional problem. This can be especially true if
the writer has endured an extended period of time away from the water.
As time marched closer to the deadline for this story I was still short
of a subject – still short of recent fishing time.
I made the mistake of confessing my dilemma to a
friend (?) who observed, "should not be a problem Bish, just
make something out of nothing like you normally do. Never known
you to let the truth get in the way of a good story before."
‘Cheeky chap,’ (or thoughts to that effect) I thought.
As an old advertising and marketing man from way back, I usually
write on the basis of ‘the truth well told.’
Help was at hand. I managed to sneak in a weekend
– over deadline, but close enough – down to Hatepe on the shore
of Lake Taupo, and was hoping that the fishing would provide some
stimulus for my empty creative cells. My enthusiasm for the trip
was bolstered by the reports I got back from the previous weekend.
My lad Ed, and his friend, had an absolute ball, catching over
a dozen fish each on each of two days. This, despite low-and-clear
river conditions.
I arrived at Hatepe late on Friday night, a freezing
Friday night. Usually I would kit up and head out to the rip,
but not this night. By the time I got the fire under way to turn
the inside of our cottage from a fridge into something approaching
warm, I decided an electric blanket set to full-burn was an excellent
idea.
Next morning – cooked to about medium-rare – and
bright and early around nine-thirty-ish, I reluctantly stuffed
myself into waders, draped on my vest, and armed with my rod,
crunched over the frozen grass and puddles to the river.
The river remained low and clear. But armed with
Ed’s and other’s stories from the previous weekend I marched confidently
to a deep pool that usually held fish when fish were about.
This pool requires some finesse. The river immediately
above the pool is wide and shallow. But just before the pool the
contours of the river change enough to funnel the water into a
narrow shoot running along the far bank. Here the river bends
quickly bringing the water back toward the angler. Trick is to
get the flies close enough to the far bank, so that when they
sink they end up in the strongest current flowing through the
pool.
My first cast was close to the far bank, too close
– and the blackberries reinforced their reputation for taking
no prisoners. Re-rigged, I fired out another cast, a gentler version
of the first, and the flies dropped short, so they sank into the
back-water current, and with unerring accuracy picked up the only
snag in the pool. A couple of ‘golly-goshes’ and another re-rig
later I fired out another cast. This time the cast went where
it was supposed to, so did the flies, but their drift through
the pool was uninterrupted. The next ten or twelve casts went
by without incident, until a little too much weight and a little
too little concentration saw the blackberries snatch another rig.
While I was rigging up I watched as two fish broached
in the pool, right where they were supposed to be. Enthusiasm
rekindled I fired out another score or more casts – nothing took
the flies, not even the blackberries, nor the snag.
Time for a move to the next pool up the river. This
pool, much shallower and wider than the recently fished one, held
some fish. I could see them! Now this pool requires some departure
from what may be accepted as elegant casting, especially if you
are unlucky enough to be right-handed, or devoid of ambidexterity.
My method is to face downstream, cast the line downstream
and let it straighten out on the water, then using the pull of
the current, and the grip of the water to load the rod, heave
into a back cast that is actually a forward cast. I aim high above
the landing area, because when the flies get near to being above
the right place, the line must be pulled back just a little to
tuck the flies back under the tip of the fly line. This allows
the flies to sink as rapidly as possible.
In this pool the flies must sink quickly. The fish
lie just behind two fallen trees that lie in-line with the current.
So the flies must land in a triangle of snag free space between
the branches, and then drop stone-like to the bottom before the
fly-line above drags them in front of the trout’s snout.
This morning I managed cast after cast, all falling
in exactly the right place. The Glo-bugs went in the right place
too – I could see them. I am not sure about the trouts’ vision
though, they apparently could not see what was right in front
of their noses. Time after time the flies drifted through the
waiting throng of fish, each time treated with total ignore. The
only fish that showed any sign of marginal reaction was one that
quickly moved a few centimetres to one side, I am sure in response
to a fly that actually touched it.
So I changed nymphs, changed leaders, changed the
weight of the flies, changed their size, all yielding nothing,
zilch, nada, nil and nought.
So I moved onwards and upwards, up-river fishing
all the pools I knew, and a couple of those I did not. On this
journey I managed to lose more than a dozen rigs, my temper a
couple of times, and damn near my rod when trying to pull a blackberry
bush into forward cast.
But most frustrating of all was the visible evidence
of fish – I could see them – and so could the other anglers on
the river. But they too were having the same results as me – empty
creels and diminishing enthusiasm.
I thought I had reached my low point when I was
fishing a pool just below the bridge that is the upper-limit for
fishing the Hinemiaia River in winter. There I stood casting up
into the riffled water just above a chute into a far-bank hole,
when not a rod length from me a pod of trout swam past me and
into the pool. There were a dozen or more fish.
I admitted defeat – it was late in the afternoon
and time for me to head back. But just on the off chance I decided
to have a look in the second pool I had fished, the one with the
two trees. As I headed off the main track along the bank and out
to the river I could hear voices. There were indeed two boys of
around eleven or twelve fishing the pool. Actually, one fishing,
one watching. The fishing one was standing ankle-deep in the shallows
flailing the water into a froth with an ancient fibre-glass rod
and a cracked a mostly sinking fly line. He had on a Glo-bug behind
a weighted ‘nymph’ that was just lead. He was casting to the near-bank
side of the trees and the drift took his flies some two or three
metres to his side of where the fish still lay.
I watched for a couple of casts, and then on the
third cast a fish darted from amongst his companions and engulfed
the Glo-bug. The boy horsed the fish to the beach, where his friend
announced that "it was bigger than the first one." To
prove it he laid the recent fish alongside a fish on the grass
I had not seen. Now totally disgruntled I trudged back to the
cottage.
The next day, more of the same. Without the kids,
thankfully – do not think my ego could have sustained another
battering.
So, there I was, over deadline, and nothing
to write about – damn shame really. Still I have a few weeks till
the next deadline.