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18 October 2020
It was a really mixed bag this week, two miserable days in the rain, hail and even snow with a gale downstream wind, no fish and three lovely days on small streams.  I started the week by going to a backwater that I knew would be clear even though the main river was still high and dirty.  In fact this pond works better when the river is dirty as it puts the level up while remaining clear and the trout move into it to get away from the dirty river.  We actually went and checked it out today as our small stream venture had not worked out and the Mataura looked as though it was coming right but there was only one fish in it, the others had all moved out.

On the Monday it was full of trout and I hooked three on the black pupa you can see in a jaw but when I moved to the main part of the pond where most of the fish were they would not look at it, even though it looked as though they were feeding on midge pupa.

So I put on my water boatman pattern, see photos and the first trout did not hesitate and I hooked 4 more on it, I fished it the same as the pupa, about 10cms below a small indicator.  I have started using the Loon biostrike putty recently and I find it stays on the leader OK and I can use only a small piece of it.  I have been using the yellow and it is very easy to see, most times I can see the fish take the fly but when it is a bit further out I strike when I see the indicator move.

The water boatman is a very easy tie, I put 2 glass beads(Spotlight, the best fly tying material shop in town) on a #16/#18 hook, tie in a bunch of pheasant tail fibers, dub a small ball, push the beads back hard, run the thread over them, tie in another dubbing ball in front of the beads, bring the fibers over as a wingcase, pull one fiber either side back , wrap a couple of turns of thread in front of them and cut off the rest, cut the two fibers to size for legs and whip finish.  I then give the wingcase a liberal dose of Sally Hansen nail hardener and that's it.

Greville and I then spent two awful days and three fabulous days on small streams, all the streams are fullish but OK and coming down, there were good mayfly hatches from about 2.00 and building during the later arvo with spinners.  Not a lot was happening in the mornings and you can cover a lot of water that will have rising fish later in the arvo so we never bothered to start until late morning.

The Mataura is coming down and clearing fast but I think I will stay on the small streams for the coming week.

 

Tight lines
David

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11 October 2020
The rivers are starting to come down but are still a bit ugly and although Greville managed a nice fish out of the headwaters of a small stream on opening we were forced to seek out some still waters.  It looks like a few showers during the week but generally getting better, there is still a lot of snow melt to come down the Waikaia/Mataura so I will be looking at the top end of a few small streams next week

With not a lot to report I have put up some shots of my mainstay flies of last season, please forgive the standard of photography as I am still trying to crack this close up stuff.  I am not sure which order they will come up on the blog but you should be able to tie my comments to the various flies.  Also note that all these flies are for the Mataura and small streams.

The first one is my main dun imitation, I tie it in an #18 and is really just a Dad's Favourite parachute imitation with a stripped quill body, dark CDC post and brown hackle, it worked really well for me whenever there were mayflies on the water.

My spent spinner is also a parachute, my dun worked so well that I tied up the spinner the same, with a red stripped quill body, light CDC post and light ginger hackle and is also in #18.

The Dunedin dun I use if they are taking just in and under the film, I don't use so many emerger patterns per se as I think now that they are more likely taking the nymph itself just before it emerges. This is my version and the colour did not come out that well in the photo but I think an unweighted pheasant tail nymph would work just as well.  This is also in #18 but #16 would be OK too.

My standard nymph, it is tied on a TMC 2488H #16 and has a 2mm tungsten beadhead which is as heavy as I go, any heavier and I will take up golf.  I used to tie my nymphs in lighter hare's ear but after seeing the dark brown nymphs in stomach contents during a mayfly hatch I have taken to tying my nymphs in dark brown too, just as I tie the Dunedin dun in dark brown.

I have used the same beetle pattern for years, peacock herl body, round foam back, flat would be just as good, nice wide hackle for flotation and a pink post, I use a Kamasan B110 #14  The willow grub is the same as Stu's but I was tying this same grub pattern 30 years ago with yellow rubber bands, now I use a more floaty foam.  I tie it in #18 mostly but last year I went down to #20 and it seemed to work OK but I have not yet decided whether it is better than an #18.  I know there are heaps of WG patterns out there but this style seems to work as well as any, I actually don't think the fly is that important, check out a blog I did on willow grub fishing last season.  The cicada is just a standard pattern and again it is not that important, it is just size and silhouette that they are looking for.

I got through with just those few flies, I often tried others that worked but I seemed to end up back with these, they are not the answer as a quick look through old fly boxes filled with world beaters will show.  But I will start off the season with these and I am sure a few variations will appear, after all it would be terribly boring if we had only one super fly.

Tight lines
David

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4 October 2020
The new season has started but what an awful start, after rain all night and today rivers that were already high are rising steadily so things are not looking good.  As all the rivers were out on Thursday Greville and I headed for an estuary that might be reasonably clear and see if we could find some midge feeders, we did and caught a few nice fish but golly they were tough.

They would not look at a midge pupa 7/8cms below a small indicator but we had seen a few that looked like they were taking off the top instead of just in and under the surface film.  We had already tied up a few shuttlecocks as they call this fly in the UK and by the way it works well as an emerger on the Mataura.  They were still not easy but we caught fish on the shuttlecock flies and it was a lot more fun than using the indicator method.  I have put up a couple of shots of the flies I used, one is tied with a CDC wing and the other has a TMC aerowing.

I will persevere with these flies as it is very visible, almost dry fly, well it probably could be classified as that, as that is what we call it when we do it in the Mataura.  I don't feel as though it is as effective as a pupa under the indicator but as they say, one on the dry is worth ten on the nymph.  The other interesting thing is that we have had to go up to 7.5lbs and 8lbs respectively 0.18 and 0.20 in tippet size as anything under that which was 4X these trout would just smash us off. These trout still took the heavier tippet and our flies are #16/#14, I often wonder whether we worry too much about our tippet size, Greville uses his 7.5lbs, 0.18 tippet in the mataura with small dries all the time.

Lets hope that is the end of the rain and we can get back into the rivers, please check out the blog below which I did last week on our winter fishing.

Tight lines
David

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27 September 2020
A new season is upon us and it will be very different from what it has been but probably  more like the way it was before the advent of tourist anglers, so make the most of it.  The blog will be slightly different too, as with no clients there will be a lot less photos and it will be more an account of my own personal fishing and observations.  I will be sorry not to see old regular overseas friends but by the same token I am rather looking forward to just fishing on a whim, where ever and when ever I want.

After a fabulous end to the season in May a very mild winter allowed us to do more winter fishing than usual.  We used to fish the mouths of the local rivers for sea trout with shooting heads and heavier sink tips not my style but fun now and again on a nice winter day. But over the last few years we have discovered that there are large populations of trout further back from the mouths in the calmer estuaries, inlets and tidal lagoons in all the river systems in Southland that flow into the sea.

I am sure these sea trout feed on whitebait from August and smelt later in November but mainly they are feeding on midge pupa the rest of the time.  The water quality in most of these coastal waters is not the best but ironically the worse the water quality the more midge there are and consequently more trout to feed on them.  I have put up a photo of the stomach contents of a trout and as you can see it is chocker with midge pupa and nothing else, there is another photo of clouds of adult midge, whenever you see this have a look around and you might be surprised at what looks like it is rising. These trout are not actually rising but taking the pupa just under the surface before they hatch.

Midge fishing is big in the UK and also in BC but it is a very under utilized form of fishing in NZ, this is a pity as it is a difficult, technical but highly absorbing type of fishing.  I use an #18 midge pupa, I have put up a photo of the one I like, it is just black thread, silver wire ribbing, some aerowing to imitate the breathers and then I coat it in resin and hit it with the UV torch.  I hang this 6/7 cms below a very small indicator and proceed to ambush anything I see, these trout are very spooky and you can't put anything to close to them.

 

I use my normal leader system, which is a 12 foot tapered leader down to 3X with a couple of feet of 7lb tippet, I usually use a couple of feet of 4X or 5X but these trout are a good size and they can also bust you off in the weed which there is generally a lot of in these types of waters, so 6/7lbs is a good idea.   So give these esturine waters a go, there are plenty around Southland and also any slower, lower quality water near the mouths of most Southland rivers.

Conditions look terrible for opening and the forecast for the next few days is awful, there will be a lot of snow to come down the Waikaia into the Mataura which is not good for mayfly hatches.  So I may not get out on Thursday but I will be keeping an eye on the smaller streams and will be into those as soon as they clear.

Good luck and tight lines for the coming season.
David

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