David's Blog on trout fishing on the Mataura River, Southland, New Zealand

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22 November 2020
I had a lovely afternoon with Mike on a small stream early in the week, no wind and they were on spinners, feeding well but not easy as you only get a couple of shots at them. I had one though that kept moving around under a willow and I thought I had put it down several times but it was just not seeing the fly, finally it was over his nose and it was taken. Mike took a wee video of me hooking one, I have put it up so check it out.

Then I had a couple of afternoons on the Mataura, good conditions, cold SW, showery and I sat there in prime spots but not a mayfly or a trout. I shall keep trying but for some reason the Mataura is just not firing at the moment. I could go and do some nymphing but my heart is not really in it as there should be early season rises. I think I will stick with the small streams as there should be beetles around by now although I have seen no sign of any.

Then we had some terrible winds, I didn't go anywhere, I have to admit I don't like wind, it just seems to take the pleasure out of casting so as soon as I get some wind I am off. Living close to the river I can afford to do so but it has made me a poor caster in the wind but as I can go whenever I want it doesn't really matter. I enjoy casting and if the wind is going to take that pleasure away I don't see the point in it.

I got up early on Thursday and drove over to western Southland to a small stream and again there was no wind and they were really going on spinners. I took 7/8 and stopped for lunch, I should have kept going although that was more than enough fish for me because as soon as I got up after lunch these was a puff of wind and the spinners and the rises had finished. I caught all these trout on a #18 spinner pattern that I have put up here before, it was attached to 4X Rio Powerflex plus 7lb, quite a thick tippet but these fish took it no trouble. This is good because you can really horse them in and get them released quickly.

I went down to the Mataura below my house this afternoon, it was a cold, showery SW and there had to be mayflies and there were at 3.00pm. I hooked one good trout on the parachute #18 Dad's favourite and he took off downstream and came off, I quickly hooked another who did the same thing and when I looked up the hatch was over. It could not have lasted more than fifteen minutes but there were mayflies!

Tight lines
David

15 November 2020
Every river is in great order today, we spent last week in small streams but tomorrow I am into the Mataura. Don't get me wrong I absolutely love small water but I have not fished the Mataura at all this season and I want to try some of the new pools/ripples that have formed since the big flood.

The trout should be in good condition as all the fish we are getting on small waters are in superb shape. I was asked about the fish in the photos and what I try and do is just put up what we are catching during the week. Sometimes I will put up an interesting trout or photo that is not current but for the rest it is all what happens each week. I also do not put up just the big fish, it just so happens that everything we are catching right now are goodly fish.

They are not easy these small stream trout and we catch a few but by gee we also mess up and break off a lot! You generally only have a couple of chances although I had one on Friday that I spent an hour on. I kept changing flies and thinking I had put him down but then he would come up and take something. I took him in the end on the fly in the photo which is an easy fly to tie, split tail, biot body, aerowing post and hackle trimmed off underneath on a #16/#18.

I don't know if this fly was the complete answer because I had had him up on a couple of other flies but I missed the strike, I also think there may have been some drag problems because of where he was sitting. So the three times I got him to come up may have been my only drag free drifts.

Almost all the trout taken this week have been on spinners, in the calm early afternoon there have been mainly spinner on the water and very few duns. I must try getting to some of these spots in the mornings as I think the spinner action would be even better. We worry about the effect of intensive agriculture on these streams but it can't be doing too much harm because mayflies are like canaries in mines, if these streams were too degraded the mayflies would be the first to go but they are there in huge numbers.

Let us hope that tonight's rain is not too much as the fishing is just coming right, beetles any day now and warm enough to wade wet, perfect!
Tight lines
David

8 November 2020
There was some rain on Sunday night which kept most rivers stubbornly high, although Greville managed to sneak one out of a very small creek. We had a road trip on Monday looking for clean water but everything was still up and carrying colour, even so we found some rising fish in a rather popular spot, Greville hooked one, lost it and the rest were just impossible. They just keep moving away as soon as a fly went any where near them but it was fun trying.

Tuesday was a lovely day, probably too lovely, we went to the clearer headwaters of a small stream in the afternoon expecting a good hatch of duns but it was very hot and not a mayfly or a trout was seen. Our local mayfly deleatidium vernale really likes things quite cool and even showery so that was two tough days although we saw a few promising spots and as they say reconnaissance is never wasted.

Wednesday I spent watching the US election which I must say has now hopefully come to a successful conclusion. Greville not being the political junkie I am managed to find one rising in a very dirty looking creek, you can tell his photos when he is on his own by the date on them.

Thursday looked perfect for a first day on the Mataura, cold, showery, SW and the river is at last at a good level and clearing but although I wandered up and down this stretch from 1.00pm until about 3.30, I never saw a mayfly or a trout rise. The same thing happened today on the same beat and almost the same conditions and although some mayfly came off between 2.00 and 3.00, nothing rose. I think I will stick with the small streams for a while yet.

Friday we did another small stream, everything was clearing and actually it looks good for at least another week out. There was no wind and there were spinners on the water all day with strangely only small fish up on them. A few duns appeared later in the afternoon and this brought up some bigger trout but they were actually caught on spinner patterns because this was what we had on and they were still on the water. I have been using my Sage SP 5wt but this day I changed to my Sage SP 4wt and I loved it, I have not used it for years so I may stay with it for a while.

Everything is clearing fast and the weather looks good for this coming week so tight lines.
David

1 November 2020
After a tough week when all the rivers came up last Sunday it has happened again! Over this last week waters were coming down, a lot were still unfishable but were trying their best to come right and then heavy rain in the upper reaches last night has put them out again.

I managed one afternoon on a backwater, it was the only day when I had sun to see trout even though it was still a wee bit murky. Using a water boatman, see blog of the 18th of Oct. and a small ball of putty indicator 10 cms from the fly I cast out to where fish usually cruised past and almost immediately the yellow putty went under and the first fish was on, not quite purist stuff but still fun.

I tried the same trick for a while, very pleasant sitting in the sun but nothing swam past and it was difficult to see them anyway so I decided to head for home. The water was a wee bit clearer the further I got away from the river so I laid out an ambush and waited. A couple of trout went right by the WB and totally ignored it, then I struck to soon on a good fish, I thought he was spooked but he kept circling around looking for the WB so I cast again and he spun around and ate it.

Greville and I tried the higher reaches of a small stream on Friday, it was a tad fuller than one would like and there were showers/rain and sun but no wind and from about 1.00pm there were duns and spinners and fish were up. So for the next few hours we hooked a few, lost a few as they are very strong fish in small, shallow water and plain screwed up a few. We used mainly parachute flies in #18/#16 and the trout were quite picky, I was surprised that we had to change flies a few times to get a hook up.

Next week looks like a repeat of last week with the rivers/streams still full, although there was not as much rain and things should come down a bit quicker.

Tight lines
David

25 October 2020
It has been a week for the small streams, most of which were a tad full but quite fishable and should be absolutely perfect by now. The main problem has been the NW wind which we have had all week and which generally comes straight downstream on most Southland waters, but we managed to find a few places where it was side on to us and even behind us. The Mataura is starting to look really good but the weather forecast is not, so we shall see what happens.

On the small streams at this time of the year you are entirely dependent on getting a hatch of duns or a spinner fall to get some action. In another couple or three weeks it will be a different story because we can then add the brown beetles to the mix and that gets them looking up all day. We did a small stream on Friday, Greville got one that was rising in the first pool and then we never saw a rise until we were just about to walk out. The wind had completely stopped for a short while, then we saw a trout rise on the far side and then suddenly they were going mad in the shallow ripple at the tail of the pool. When the wind had dropped there had been a fall of spinners and for an hour we had a lot of fun catching, missing and losing a cohort of smaller, silvery trout quite different from the usual denizens.

This season I am using heavier tippet, I started at the end of last season and it seems to be working OK, I have a 12' tapered leader down to 3X (8lbs) and a 6.1lb tippet. Greville is up a bit with a tapered leader to 2X and a 7.5lb tippet, this new Gigafish tippet is a lot thinner than other tippets but even so these heavier tippets don't seem to be worrying the trout plus we have only wee #18/#16 dry flies.

I have been dropping a lot of trout too this last week, I had one session where I hooked five good sized trout, had then on for goodly time and then they fell off and I lost a few during the spinner fall. I don't know what the reason is, I have been using barbless for over fifty years so it not that, I don't really mind as I would rather just hook trout than play them but I am a wee bit curious.

I have bought a wee stand for my camera so I can take some self portraits, I have only done it once but it is quite easy on the trout. I have the fish lying in the net in the water, set the camera for 12 secs, then by the time I have picked the fish up the timer goes off. I won't do it very often but now and then it is interesting especially as I will be fishing solo most of the time.

I just hope we don't get too much rain tonight, the cooler SW will be good but the rain won't.

Tight lines
David

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

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

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

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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