New Zealand Fly Fishing season is open
Simon Wilkinson
October 4, 2010
Queenstown - Freshwater Fishing Report
I just got back from 4 days looking around Southland over the opening of the 2010 – 2011 New Zealand fly fishing season. As expected the biggest storm in 50 yrs has had some effect on many of the rivers in Southland. Some big flood flows have moved channels around and in places covered good structure with fine gravel and turned over rocks. Snow melt is still coming off the mountains and many of the bigger rivers are still a wee bit on the clean green side but as the fine weather goes on this week they will continue to clear but remain on the full side.
Some of the smaller rain fed streams have seen some big flows as well and finding fish has not been easy although wherever there was good structure fish were found and most of them were in pretty good early season condition.
After two days of windy weather with high water flows and deciding to go exploring some new water with a mate from Colorado (and to be fair not finding much to get excited about) it was time to get into some fish so it was back to some tried and true old fav's that even through the flooding looked as though they had remained in good nick. Sure enough they had and one river produced 8 nice browns to the bank followed the next day by 10 to bank using a bamboo rod (made by Pezon et Michel) just for kicks – I just love the way the ‘boo bends and you can feel every twitch of the fish during battle.
All the fish ranged around the 4 – 5lb mark and the vast majority were caught in rocky riffles using a double nymph rig with the dropper nymph being a size 16 mayfly emerger style nymph doing the damage.
It's certainly been nice getting back out on to the waters I love and hooking up some early season brown trout. If you are looking for a guided fly fishing trip this summer make sure to get in touch with me and lets get you set up for a great session fly fishing on stunning New Zealand water.
Target Species:
Trout
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