Fly Fishing, Daylight saving, storms and trout
Simon Wilkinson
May 23, 2010
Queenstown - Freshwater Fishing Report
Wow – the finish of daylight seems to make such a difference down here to the light. It seems so much softer during the day.
The last week saw a very wet storm front stall over the Fiordland and South Westland which dropped around 400 – 500ml of rain. This stuffed my plans to helicopter into a remote west coast river to do an overnight guided expedition with a client so when wisely changed plans and headed east away from the rain and had some good fishing in quite low water conditions and still got trout to lift and take cicadas and blowflies.
Another big rain came thru and hit Southland and many of the rivers that way saw the biggest floods of the season with the Oreti going to near 500 cumecs. It's dropping and clearing now but in some of the mid sections has radically changed the lay of the river as much river bed has moved. It will certainly be a matter of finding old channels with good rocky structure and there you will find the fish.
I had a day in the backcountry yesterday and although the Southerly wind was cold the sun was out and the cicadas were singing happily and we got stuck into some nice fishing in an extremely beautiful little mountain stream with some good success.
This afternoon I pick up a client and we are heading out for another mission into the wilds with one night in a remote hut and then one night in the bivvy cocoons further up the system before we finish back in Queenstown late Friday night. Hopefully we will track down some big trout that were eating mice early in the season and are super chunky and haven't seen a fisherman in a while. The weather is looking conducive so it should be a great trip regardless.
Target Species:
Trout
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