Trout of Zeal—My first taste

Crossing the shallow riffle, a large shadow on the light bottom of the pool’s tailout just upstream caught my attention. Slowly moving up the bank my excitement grew as it became clear that the shadow was cast be a large brown trout. The fish was actively feeding in less than 2 feet of water a short ways off the bank on my side of the river, darting side to side eagerly intercepting unseen subsurface insects. I snuck closer and took a knee an easy casting distance downstream, his blind spot, to ponder my tact. The fish gave me confidence in my dry fly when he zoomed out of his feeding lane to inspect the food value of a floating piece of debris—just the sign I needed, he’s willing to look up. I stripped line off my reel, false casted three times off to the side, then turned and dropped my blue humpy three feet upstream of his nose. Without hesitating the fish slid forward and inhaled the offering—flawless! I let out an audible hoot as I stood up to dance with the force quickly taking my line. What a perfect sequence of events in this picturesque setting, I thought to myself, I am truly fortunate. After a couple runs around the pool I tailed the 24 inch plus brown, probably the largest of my life. A couple photos snapped, many thanks given and he was set free.  

New Zealand trouting is a different game than back home in the States, and I’m still learning to play. The fish are far less numerous which means covering a lot of water per fish, but the ones you find are much larger on average so it’s worth the effort. This beauty of a brown (above) was only the third fish I had seen, let alone hooked, on four outings during which I covered about 6 miles of Pakihi Stream. The stream was a very manageable size and its clear water was an immaculate window to the world below. Shallow riffles cascaded between a seemingly endless number of turquoise pools and deep runs—textbook trout water, or so I thought. I had read before coming to NZ that the most effective backcountry technique was sight fishing: only casting to spotted fish. But so much of this water looked too good to pass up and my first few times out I couldn’t help but put a cast or two to each likely lie, all of which were fruitless—naïve American.  During my time on the Pakihi I didn’t hook a single fish blind casting, but I managed to dupe every fish I saw first. Attractor dries or generic nymphs in combination with a decent cast always did the trick. The challenge was in finding them, not fooling them, so over time I casted less and walked more and my success increased. Most of the fish I caught were rainbows, all over 16 inches. The biggest bow, in the vicinity of 24 inches, got bonked for the smoker--coated in brown sugar and honey it was a nice compliment to the evening tea.