My career on the water is young enough that I can remember my childhood fascination around exotic fisheries. These were places or species that I felt were so unlikely to end up in front of me anytime soon that they continued to become elevated to a more godlike status every season as I was exposed to the larger fly fishing world.
One of the big ones was always New Zealand. The fly fishing community has already established the country as a mythical trout oasis to generations of anglers, selling it as a place to test your skills on the very best sight fishing and some of the biggest wild trout in the world. To many, it’s a proving ground that showcases the very best of what fly fishing for trout can be in our sport. What New Zealand’s fisheries mean to fly fishing was enough of a draw to interest me in someday making the trip. Excluding many details, the opportunity arose for me this past March.
I broke a few of my own rules here. As someone whose resources don’t currently allow for big fishing travels, I try to limit my few trips to ones that target new native species that are not readily available where I live. Journeying 10,000 miles to catch brown trout, a fish with the same non-native status in New Zealand that it holds in the U.S., usually would be of little interest to me. This time, my excitement around fishing here was more in the place itself. All that New Zealand means to the sport, and the unique challenges that fishing here presents (more on that later) was all that I needed to pack my gear on this trip.
Another big draw to visit New Zealand at this time was that I could fish it with friends, both old and new. Longtime college fishing buddy Franky DeMayo and his friends Jon Harriott and Pat Donohue had been fishing the South Island for the entire summer, traveling by van and covering a huge amount of water. I couldn’t wait to join the guys and pick up all they had learned, as well as tackle some new waters together.
On day one, we headed out to an unassuming lowland stream that ran through a series of sheep pastures. The slow muddy runs looked more like a place I’d find smallmouth bass in the States than what I’d expect a potential personal best brown trout to come out of, but I followed my hosts’ leads, creeping slowly a ways back from the bank and keeping my eyes peeled for any activity. As the new guy, I was chosen to start us off. The others would spot and hang onto the rest of the gear, which consisted of a few 5 and 6 weights with different dry droppers, heavier nymph rigs, and a streamer setup. This allowed us to quickly be ready for whatever position we found fish feeding in. Once a fish was spotted and we were in place, it was up to me to nail the first cast before we alerted our targets.
I wish I could say that I confidently crept up to the first 8 pound brown trout that I saw and got it in the net. The system of any new fishery takes time to learn, which is an aspect of this sport I am at peace with and even look forward to. This thought still doesn’t improve the feeling you get when the 8 pound brown trout you’ve now just completely lined goes flying upstream.
Twenty foot leaders, strong winds, spooky trout, and thoughts of “I came all the way down here so I better not blow this” playing through your head definitely take some time to adjust to. These fish rarely give anglers a second chance, and not being ready in time for a cruising fish to slide into position or making a careless first cast humbled me quickly.
After several hours of sight fishing efforts, my first kiwi trout came on a blind cast. We stalked up to a fish consistently rising on a drop off at the end of a riffle, and every once in a while caught glimpses of fish cruising on the mud flat above it. Not wanting to risk getting closer and without being totally sure where the other fish were, I decided to risk a long cast that would land well above our target to avoid putting down anything above us. A few feet into the drift I saw my dry go under, and ended up with a perfect starter fish to the trip. The ice had been broken, and I felt ready to chase a true New Zealand monster.
The next few days would be spent fishing a mix of classic backcountry streams and some of the most famous rivers in the country. They were crystal clear freestones that ran through wide open, mountain flanked valleys and home to high densities of huge fish.
They were also managed differently as a result. Some of the streams we fished were broken up into “beat” systems, where anglers select a specific stretch of water to fish for the day. There are no signs or markers except for the designated parking areas off the road which indicate which beat you’re in front of, and feature maps that show where it starts and ends. From there, you hike into the river and have a stretch of water all to yourself. I liked the beat system here. It lowers the pressure on fisheries that already get hit hard, and saves anglers from wasting their time fishing behind someone else, which often isn’t worth it here due to the spookiness of the fish. It was also first come first serve, so as long as we got an early start we were still guaranteed wherever we wanted to fish for the day.
On the first day at a new spot, our team crept slowly up to a deep bend in the river. Franky was spotting on the far bank, and called me up to join him on a large boulder. As I arrived beside him, Franky pointed at a few huge shapes Jon was preparing to cast at. Two 8 to 10 pound browns were cruising the slow water off the corner, picking off nymphs as they drifted by.
A few hours later it was my turn to fish again. It was early afternoon now, and the sun was high enough to touch every corner of the river. The fish were extra spooky and it took even less to put these fish down than it had on the small stream the day before. The river we were on was also pretty well known, and these fish had likely been targeted in the last few days. They were much bigger on average however, and we knew if we could hook a few fish they’d be good ones.
After several shots at fish that didn’t come to pass, we spotted a dark shape on the far side of the river. The fish was picking off nymphs consistently, and even rising occasionally. A large gravel bar separated the river almost in two here. A deeper run sat in the bend on our bank, and the section the fish was in was a shallow tailout of a pool on the other side of the bar. I used the bar and the stiff wind that had picked up as cover, creeping slowly from a ways back as the rest of the team watched from the top. I could barely see the fish now with the wind rippling on the water, but it appeared not to be affected by my approach. My first cast was long and I winced as it landed on the water. I hadn’t lined it, but I was closer than I wanted to be. I let my dry dropper drift far past the fish before recovering and going again. This time, the cast landed well as the wind picked up. Having lost the fish in the conditions again, I stared at my dry as it drifted above where I had last seen my target. A huge head came out of the chop and ate my blowfly imitation off the surface.
I was stoked to get on the board the day before, but this brown felt like my first true New Zealand fish. The setting, the conditions, the stalk, the presentation, watching the eat; it was all what I had dreamed of experiencing down here.
Over the next few days I found myself falling into a rhythm that Franky, Jon, and Pat had set for themselves over the last few months. We’d arrive at our spot or beat early to ensure that we locked it down for the day, and would rig and food prep until the first good sight fishing light was on the water. We traveled heavy, with four to five rods used by whoever was up to fish throughout the day. Shots at fish came often, and I couldn’t help but be impressed at how many larger class fish were in whatever waters we explored.
Three of us acted as fly fishing caddies of sorts by re-rigging, juggling rods, and spotting fish (often all at the same time) as the angler stayed ready to go. Each fish was a different puzzle with new drifts to read, a feeding cycle to match, and a fight plan to think out just in case. When a fish did get hooked, the small streams provided little room for error. We lost a lot of fish and blew a lot of casts, but watching a plan come together the way we drew it up was oddly satisfying in itself. It was chaos and cohesiveness in one and just plain fun, a style of trout fishing I thought I’d never really see. By my last week in New Zealand, I thought I’d gotten a decent handle on how most anglers operated down here. Some days were slower than most, but we were catching fish every day across a range of different water types.
Then the rivers blew out. With just a few days of fishing left, a weekend of hard rain took every stream in the area up several feet, turning the fantastical sight fishing waters of every trout anglers’ dreams into chocolate milk. We had no choice but to wait for things to improve.
When my last day of fishing came around the rivers still weren’t in perfect shape, but I was going out anyway. The gauges showed water levels had dropped considerably, but without heading over ourselves we had no idea if sight fishing was even an option, or if it even mattered that we couldn’t see. I had split off from the group to do a few nights of backpacking, and arrived at the spot a few hours before the others. The river certainly didn’t look amazing. Franky and the guys hadn’t yet fished in conditions like this, so we’d have to learn on the go. Drawing on some northeastern American experiences, I re-rigged to some of my favorite runoff season setups: bright junk flies and big, dark streamers. At the head of a now roaring plunge pool, I euro nymphed up a little brown on a mop fly. It was by far the smallest fish I’d seen in the country yet, but it was a start. I wondered what the many old timers I’d met down here would say if they saw me using this technique in such sacred waters.
When Franky, Pat, and Jon arrived, we drove as far as we could upstream to see if we could find something in slightly better shape. We decided on a stretch we had briefly fished a week ago where we had seen a number of good fish. As we started moving along the bank, someone pointed out a dark shape upstream. To all of our surprises, a nice brown was sitting just out of the ripping, stained current and holding in about a foot of water, right where we could spot it. Franky was up first and also on the junk fly trend with a squirmy worm dropped off a dry. On the first cast with the worm, the fish inhaled it. We didn’t end up landing it, but the commitment was there. Just upstream, Franky spotted and hooked another nice one. Then Jon set into one blind nymphing the top of the run. This was starting to get interesting.
We crossed before another nice looking bend and looked out over an elevated bank. In the tailout of the pool, we could barely make out three huge browns, all darting back and forth. They were feeding harder than anything we’d seen over the entire trip. We hooked all three of them on a combination of the worm and a large heavy pheasant tail.
We kept experiencing the same situations throughout the day. All the fish we could catch a glimpse of in the cloudy water were eagerly eating everything that came by, and places that we couldn’t see into but looked good often had fish that could be hooked blind casting. The worm continued to produce. These were classic high-river-dropping-in-flows situations and tactics, but for some reason I never expected to see it here. It probably also didn’t hurt that the river likely hadn’t been touched by an angler in several days. We were experiencing the best fishing of my entire visit, and one of the best days the guys had seen all season. Big fish kept coming, and the whole team was getting in on the action.
Jon was up at the last spot of the day. We didn’t see anything as we walked up the run, but we spotted a fish feeding in quite literally the last section of holding water before the upstream tailout washed in. His first cast with the squirmy dropper got inhaled, and the fish shot into the still ripping current. I sprinted downstream to cut the fish off and thankfully didn’t ruin a fairly sketchy net job. It was one of my favorite moments of the trip, a summary of how we’d been operating the last few days and one more reminder of how stupid good our last day had been. We also got the whole sequence on video, which I watched back multiple times every day for a while afterwards.
And with that, my first international fly fishing experience was a wrap. New Zealand’s trout had haunted me, put me in my place, gave me moments of great joy, and then put me in my place again just for good measure. It was a fantastic challenge, a learning experience, a bucket list checkmark, and a shock to my trout fishing senses.
So should New Zealand be the peak of your trout fishing career, or the be-all end-all coldwater paradise that all of your other fishing time domestically will be leading up to, like many fly journals and films claim? Of course not. I’m a big believer that truly committing to every fishing trip and experience, no matter how far you go, will grow your skills and make you a better angler. Pretty much all of the best trout anglers I know spent their time mastering the waters around them instead of jetting off on a handful of exotic adventures throughout the year, and can still handle themselves just fine when put up against a new far away challenge. I’ll never call a country thousands of miles from the nearest native salmonid population the best place in the world to catch a trout.
That said, fishing in New Zealand is epic. Standing in the landscape that inspired the backdrop for The Lord of the Rings films while a bunch of five to eight pound wild brown trout lazily feed in front of you without a soul around is pretty hard to beat. There are fly fishing situations here that you won’t see anywhere else, and if you ever have the chance I will confirm that it’s worth doing. Just walk slowly, keep your eyes peeled, and don’t take it too seriously.
Also, if you run into a population of large brown trout with squirmy worms in their mouths, I’d like my flies back please.
Huge thanks to Franky, Pat, and Jon for their photography contributions to this post, their invaluable knowledge on the area, and for hosting me in their van, and to Cheeky Fishing for giving me the tools to succeed down South. If you’re interested more in the tactics and gear we used on this trip, check out the article I wrote for them here.