April Fishing Report

April Fishing Report

April has been an amazing month of fishing for my friends and I. The rivers have been very low as we have had no rain for ages!

Dad and I have also done a few missions down into Southland hoping to fish the famous ‘hatch’ on the Mataura river and wow was it awesome fun!

We fished tiny nymphs and long fine leaders and some very small dry flies and cdc emergers in the foam lines.

 The river was very low and clear so we had to take our time and get our casts right to fool the spooky trout. We both managed to land several nice, well conditioned fish each during the 3 O’ Clock hatch!

I have also had some great fishing on the Clutha recently with fish taking small glister nymphs and Berkley Olive-pearl soft baits along with black and gold on a ⅛ jig heads fished deep have produced some really nice browns and rainbows over the past couple of weeks.


The fishing season is over for the lowland rivers which closed on the 30th of April.

The backcountry rivers close at the end of May and can be great fun to fish right until the end as big browns start to head up out the lakes and into the rivers to spawn over winter.


In my last report I talked about the two  floatants I like to use to keep my dry flies dry and recently I was given the LOON caddy to carry both of them on my vest.

It is really handy and makes things much easier when you are on the river fishing, Southern Wild have these in store.

I'm looking forward to tying some flies and refilling my boxes over the winter months with my favorite nymph patterns.


Tight lines everyone and have a great winter!


Cheers Louie the Fish

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