With the weather turning cooler, fish are starting to move into river systems and become more active.
Whitebait are present and moving up the rivers, and I have seen some good fish gorging themselves in backwaters and spring creeks chasing shoals of bait.
These fish are very active and will take most things if they stay still long enough to see your fly!
With temperatures soaring and river levels dropping, the fishing has been coming right over the last week or so. The week ahead looks O.K. too for a change.
January seemed to be fairly windy in most parts, with brisk Southerly changes dropping temperatures at times, interspersed with strong hot northwest winds.
Proudly brought to you by Craig Smith from Hatch Fishing
Summer is well and truly here, with some nice warm days. There is still some patchy weather with strong winds and rainfall, which seems to be a bit of a theme this season!
Trout are in full dry fly feeding mode, with green beetles being a popular choice, cicadas are just starting to make themselves known. Blowflies are also common and a good “go to” pattern if nothing is obviously happening.
Sub surface there are some excellent damsel fly hatches, and the nymphs are being taken very well. Make sure you have a couple of different colours in your fly box - quite often the fish will target reddish nymphs over the usual olive ones, which can be rather frustrating if you are caught short.
At the time of writing most backcountry rivers are experiencing high flows, so heading East or fishing still waters are options worth considering.
Remember at all times to be considerate to other anglers, and talk to them about what their intentions are and see if you can work in together. If they are there before you, then they have the first pick of options. Also, make sure you leave a note on your car with your intended fishing direction (upstream, downstream etc) so the next angler doesn’t have to guess what you are doing.
Above is a nice green beetle eating brown from a local river.
Craig Smith
The start of November sees all local fisheries open, with the exception of the Upper Ahuriri (December 1) and Twizel region (Nov 3).
Unfortunately there have been some significant storms making the fishing hard in many areas during October, and this looks set to continue into at least the first week or so of November. Anglers with good local knowledge will want to look for smaller streams that drop quickly after rainfall.
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