What a crazy couple of months of weather we have just experienced ! Endless rain, wind and a couple of good dumps of snow have seen many of the rivers in the south Island reach record flows with lakes Wanaka and Wakatipu hitting 20yr record levels and spilling into the townships in places ! This has of course made things on the fishing front pretty hard work with options some days being some what limited. Lake Hawea along with several smaller still waters have saved the day on several occasions and the lake edges have been fishing very well (thank goodness !). Other options have included heading out of the Central Otago and into the neighboring regions that in some cases haven’t been hit so hard with the weather and or it’s rivers and streams have cleared much quicker.

I just recently purchased the large Loon Outdoors Caddy that holds both my Loon Aquel and Top Ride containers one on top of the other. I was finding often that the lid was popping open on my Loon Top Ride container and the contents spilled all throughout my Simms vest pocket ! The new system means no more digging through the pockets on my vest as everything is right at hand and nice and tidy.

Sundays in our house are for fun ! My wife ski’s with my daughter Charlotte and Louie and I have fishing adventures so it’s a win win for every one. We have spent the last few Sundays either stalking the edges of Lake Wanaka or Lake Hawea sight fishing to post spawning browns who are patrolling the shallow’s looking to fatten up after their winter spawning run or fishing the mouths of some of our in-flowing rivers and streams for rainbows who are about to head upstream to spawn !

Blood worms are the larvae of midge and they get their bright red coloration from the hemoglobin and oxygen that they hold in there bodie’s. They are commonly found in the softer sediment of our slower moving rivers (especially back waters ) lakes and pond’s through out New Zealand. As they get close to hatching they begin to slowly wiggle their way to the surface, it’s at this is time they are most vulnerable to cruising trout. I like to fish my blood worm imitation’s suspended just off the bottom tied on as a dropper below a dry fly indicator. The length of the dropper is dependent on the depth of the water being fished but usually around 20-30cm is the norm.

The level of Lake Wanaka has finally dropped so access to some of my favourite lake edge stalking spots is good. Louie and I set off early this morning with a box of freshly tied woolly buggers he had whipped up the night before , we arrived to find a cool wind blowing down the lake luckily onto our backs. We rigged up and began scanning the shore line and deeper guts for any movement. It wasn’t long before we saw a shadow weaving its way along the sandy edge and with a delicate cast from Louie and short strip he was into his first fish of the day !

Guided fly fishing in the South Island of New Zealand with Paul Macandrew

Our guide for the next three days, Paul picked us up outside our Queenstown accommodation early next morning and off we headed south. “Well fella’s” he said, “the bad news is there’s rain forecast tomorrow, maybe even snow, and so the planned trip to the Upper Oreti River is not a good idea. The good news however is that we’ve got other options. So, I’m reckoning we start today on the Aparima river”. It took around an hour and a half to get to the quaint little town of Mossburn which would be our accommodation for the next two nights. We dumped our bags, picked up our packed lunch that Paul had pre-arranged and off we went. We were on the river by mid-morning.

For as long as I can remember I have always headed to smaller rivers and streams to sight fish on the 1st of October but this year I decided to change it up. Ive been bitten badly by the double handed fly fishing bug this past winter and decided to swing flies with a couple of mates on the Waitaki river this opening day. Trev and I left a 6am to meet good mate and fellow guide Will Spry in Omarama before heading down to Kurow and then onto the river from there. It was a bleak cold morning and the fishing was pretty slow for the first couple of hours,so we changed locations and drove down stream anoher few km’s to the next acess. The first big pool I nailed a nice wee 4lb brownie and Trev hooked a big bow that unfortunately came unstuck.

The white bait season is under way now so I'm hoping to get over again next week end to hopefully find a few more sea run trout than my previous trip !  The white baiter's now occupy many of the best spots to fish with their netted stands or as they walk the mouths with their scoop nets so you have to mind where you fish, but I love chatting with the many folk who make the pilgrimage from all over the country to try their luck for the white gold ! You get too meet some absolute characters and get to hear some very fishy stories too !

All have been taken whilst swinging intruder style streamers on my new Epic 7130 carbon Spey rod using the Scientific Anglers Freight-liner skagit line with a custom cut T10 -12ft sink tip. The beauty of this line set up is that allows you too get deep quickly to where many of the bigger fish have been holding this winter.