Having been raised in Northamptonshire, within easy reach of some of the UK’s finest reservoirs, I always thought I knew how to fly fish. Indeed I am no stranger to nymph fishing. Pitsford, Grafham Water, Rutland, Draycote and Ravensthorpe all feature in some of my fondest fishing memories – drifting down natural scum lanes, casting a team-of-three at rising ‘stockies’. What’s more I have been lucky enough to experience some fantastic river sport, taking on some of Scotland’s wild browns and seatrout, often in the hours of darkness, on the rivers Ness and Border Esk. Hence, when I arrived in New Zealand I felt well-equipped with both knowledge and experience, and expected to some extent to show those wild New Zealand trout who was boss. I was soon to learn a lesson.
My re-education began in the North Island, in what is arguably New Zealand’s best-known fishing area – Lake Taupo. Following a brief conversation with the local tackle dealer I headed for the banks of the Waitahanui – one of several beautiful, tree-lined rivers flowing into Lake Taupo. I knew I had the correct flies: at the end of a twelve-foot cast I fished an absurdly heavy hare’s ear nymph, with an egg imitation trailing no more than twelve inches behind it – exactly as I had been instructed in the tackle shop. And yet I was completely lacking in confidence. I attempted to vary the presentation, but I couldn’t get the flies down to any depth, and like many anglers I have spoken to, without confidence I soon lose hope and become restless. However, on this occasion, I put my doubts down to the new, foreign surroundings and fished on… all day.
As the afternoon began to darken I packed up. Completely devoid of action, I was disappointed, even slightly despondent. I had been warned that recent rains had brought the river up and had added a touch of colour, but it looked good and I had felt sure that, in such a productive area, there would be little cause for concern. As I trudged downstream I pondered my fortunes or lack of, when I came across another angler, apparently fishing his way upstream. Thinking this a little odd in what were clearly not dry-fly conditions, I decided to quiz him. I didn’t get as far as “hello”. There on the bank, shimmering in the evening glow, was a beautiful rainbow of at least 4lbs. I was in awe. It was one of the most fabulous looking fish I had ever laid eyes on, and yet my congratulations were met with little more than indifference!
The gentleman in question turned out to be one of Taupo’s finest – a local police officer. Like most Kiwi’s he was a very friendly chap, who was also more than happy to help a somewhat forlorn (and fishless) ‘pom’ with some badly-needed advice. He also explained that a four pounder is very much ‘average’ in those parts, which accounted for his apparent lack of enthusiasm.
Feeling more than a little inept, I listened and discovered the rudimentary errors of my ways. From the fishing I had done, I had assumed that fishing one’s way through a pool top-to-bottom was the best, if not only way of catching a river trout, other than on a dry. It had, after all, always been the preferred method for the Scottish seatrout and was certainly an efficient way of covering a pool – casting down and across and allowing the flow of the river to fish the pool for you. When it came to nymph fishing I could not have been more wrong. We were not trying to induce a take from the fish’s aggression, as one does with a salmon – we were imitating their natural diet, in this case a nymph and a trout egg. In the absence of jet propulsion it is unlikely you would find a natural nymph, let alone a fish egg, powering his way across the flow of even the gentlest river. It would, of course, be far more realistic to find them following the river’s course downstream, perhaps tumbling along the riverbed and into the jaws of the waiting trout. Hence, logically, in order to imitate such a food source it would be necessary to allow the artificial to follow just such a course with little, or preferably no drag across-stream – as with a dry fly. Surely then the best way to cover the pool would be starting at the tail, working one’s way towards the head, casting upstream and allowing the nymphs to fish back towards you. This is exactly how I would expect to catch a trout on a dry without spooking them, and this is exactly how my new-found instructor had been catching New Zealand’s trout for years.
Now I expect that many people are reading this article with surprise. How could someone who has been casting a fly since the age of five not know, or fail to deduce that this is how to nymph-fish a river? Indeed I amazed myself. On the other hand, I hope that anyone who has not experienced this style of fishing before, can learn from my mistakes rather than their own. For those anglers to whom upstream nymphing is nothing new, there may be still a thing or two to bear in mind for future adventures.
By the time I left my new acquaintance I had gained more than just fishing advice. It was now dark and, with his house no more than two hundred yards from the river (something I noticed without a shred of jealousy, I might add… honest), the policeman asked me to follow him (not a situation I would relish under different circumstances!). From an impressive array of fly boxes in his garage, he gifted me fifteen or twenty egg flies of various sizes and weights. He also handed me one of his home-made indicators (again something that I had not seen before). This indicator, he explained, should last me some time, as it would be attached to the end of the fly line, not the cast and hence would be difficult to lose. Finally he handed me the 4lb rainbow. Apparently he had plenty still to eat (show-off). Most grateful I returned to my hostel, where my travelling companions were waiting in the kitchen. I unwrapped the fish to no lack of applause and it took every last drop of honesty for me to admit (eventually!) that I hadn’t actually caught it myself.
The next day my travelling companions and I were scheduled to leave Taupo bound for the south. Making some rather thin excuses I managed to convince them that I still had time for a morning on the river – after all I had brought them dinner and I needed to put my new-found tactics into practise! As instructed I fished my way upstream this time. Below my indicator (almost always essential if you ever hope to see a take with this method) I fished an eleven-foot cast to a heavily weighted egg. To the bend of the hook of this egg I attached a twelve-inch length of nylon, which ran to the eye of my point fly – a second egg, this time unweighted. [In New Zealand it is normal practice to attach the dropper in this manner. This is fine as long as you have a strong hook, but for larger fish it may be worth attaching the dropper in a more traditional fashion. I have seen others in New Zealand attach the trailing section of nylon to the eye of the hook of the dropper, rather than to the bend. This is all very much personal choice.]. In effect I ‘cleaned’ each pool thoroughly, allowing my artificials to drift naturally through each likely-looking lie, my eyes fixed on the indicator for the slightest twitch. The river in question was relatively narrow, so I could cover most of the width with just two or three casts from each position, before advancing a few steps further upstream to repeat the process. With such a heavy fly, long cast and only a light outfit it has to be said that the roll-casting necessitated by the overgrown banks was far from easy, and if I were to return to the same area I would take a stiffer rod and heavier line. However, after an hour’s fishing I landed my first nymph-caught, river-run rainbow. It weighed no more than a pound, but I could not have been more pleased – my first New Zealand trout on, for me, a brand new method.
This was sadly the last time I fished in the North Island, but as I travelled through the South Island my new nymphing tactic was to prove responsible for many more wild rainbows, as well as browns. These fish, to my delight and continuing amazement, averaged at least three or four pounds, with the occasional trout pushing double figures. It was here in the South Island that I learnt the next step…
Unlike the steady-flowing, deep pools of the Waitahanui, many of the rivers in the South Island of New Zealand, particularly around Queenstown, where I was based, flow more rapidly through the rugged, often treeless, ‘back-country’ (not entirely unlike some of the salmon and seatrout rivers of northern and western Scotland). In these rivers it was often in the faster-moving and shallower water that I would encounter the best sport. Admittedly on these rivers I had a lot of success fishing a large lure down and across, In fact I was regularly surprised by the way that the trout (particularly rainbows) would lie in, and take in, extremely fast-flowing water – much like a salmon (on more than one occasion I said to myself aloud, “it must be a salmon”, only to discover it was a large rainbow that took in the fast water). At the same time though, the upstream nymph was an invaluable alternative and was definitely my preferred way of fishing.
In these faster-flowing rivers I learnt a variation on the aforementioned nymphing technique, which I am sure most anglers (including previously myself) rarely, if ever, practice. Once again the point fly and dropper are fished very close together – somewhere between twelve inches and two feet apart. In this instance, however, the dropper is a dry fly. This dry must be large and, more importantly, very buoyant, as it needs not only to support the nymph, but also to serve as the indicator. Again I used a fairly long cast – perhaps eleven or twelve feet – but this time I would concentrate on the shallow runs close to my own bank. Very close. This is a method I learnt from one of the many fishing guides who operate in the area. He had noted the large numbers of fish that he and others spooked from lies close to the riverbank, in very shallow water, and as a result he decided to focus his efforts on catching these fish – fish that were often spooked, but rarely cast to. Following his advice, I have spent many pleasant hours stalking up the edge of back-country rivers and streams, casting my combination of dry and nymph into every likely-looking holding spot, and into many unlikely-looking ones. It should be noted that this often involved water no more than six or seven inches deep and as close as twelve inches from the riverbank. Such lies have accounted for nearly fifty percent of my New Zealand trout catches. It also has the advantage of producing strikes to both the nymph and the dry – even in conditions that would otherwise not be conducive to a dry fly (perhaps this is due to the fact that although the fish is on the bottom, it is still close to the surface, within easy striking range of a royal wolf!). This method can produce a lot of fish, often with explosive takes. If the fish are in close it is often also possible to spot and to stalk them, but I cannot count the number of fish I caught that I did not see, regardless of the water depth. I have even see fish take in water so shallow their backs are protruding from the water.
Admittedly the tactics I have covered here were all employed in rivers on the other side of the world, with a large head of wild fish that, in some places, have never been fished for. However they are still methods I will employ in the future wherever trout abide in moving water. What is more, today the other side of the world is only one day’s journey away. Plus, once you arrive in New Zealand an annual fishing licence for both the North and the South Island will set you back less than forty pounds sterling [ although there may be additional licences in the Lake Taupo region]. For this price you are free to explore any of the incredible variety of rivers that New Zealand has to offer, in search of your own trophy trout. These trout incidentally, thanks in no small part to the New Zealanders’ habit of voluntarily releasing most of the fish they catch, grow larger than thirty pounds in weight – naturally – and it is not unusual to spot a fish weighing more than ten pounds in any of New Zealand’s rivers. If in future you do spot one, I hope that the methods I have described here may help you to catch him.
About James Green
