It was very early on Saturday morning, 2 December, when we left for the top of Lake Matahina. The forecast was for a NE wind and rain starting at mid day. Launching above the lake takes some work and it is not worth it unless you are prepared to spend some time up there. So we made the call to try below the dam at first light then head up to the northern end the lake while the weather held.
I paddled Dan up, armed with a Red Rabbit. I removed his old tippet and replaced it with eight pond fluorocarbon. There is a rock break that we could cast both left and right while staying out of the dangerous current coming from the turbines. It took a little while but Dan hooked and landed his best brown trout. I would call it silver and likely a sea runner.
These fish tend to lie where the water is broken by rocks below the dam. They are there targeting smelt and likely inanga trying to make their way upstream. They are also there waiting for easy pickings coming through the turbines.
We had no further action so decided to go up to the lake around 8 AM. Of course we normally use old faithful, a bead head krystal olive bugger, but today we wanted to continue using new fly patterns. Last year we knocked quite a few of the bastards off the list but we were committed to knocking every fly pattern we sell off the list.
Dan put on a Grey Rabbit and I put on a bead head brown bugger. I know I must have been cheating because this pattern is a known killer. I must have been out of them last year.
We had a building northeast wind and it suited us perfectly. Normally one person paddles while the other fishes. This wind pushed us perfectly south along the edge. We were able to target all of the small spots along the edge and both of us were able to fish at the same time. The trick is to not cross lines while casting. Dan referred to it as "do not cross the streams" from Ghost Busters.
Many of you may know it is challenging fishing downwind as you need to compensate for the boat movement as you retrieve. But holy crap it was so much fun! We had continuous action but we kept missing most of the strikes! We hit all of the little pockets between shore and the weeds and the weed bed edge as the wind pushed us along.
We have a new Go Pro 10 which we were learning to use. Being blokes, we did not read the manual and made many mistakes. The cool thing is that it takes still photos, unlike my old one. So we put it to use after several f'ups. It ran out of battery so my Go Pro 1 took over. There was just enough battery life in the new one to get a few still photos. Dah, I left my good camera behind on purpose, dah.
I am going to try and recall this from memory as the data from the new Go Pro is causing all kinds of technical issues that I know nothing about.
I caught the next trout on the bead head brown bugger. Dan then got a small rainbow on the Grey Rabbit. Then Dan got one on a Black Ghost. This was the feather winged version of the same fly I documented last season on a spinning rod. It is a smelt pattern I used growing up catching landlocked salmon in Maine. I expanded that pattern to almost every species I have targeted. One great memory was dominating brown trout in the Arkansas River in Colorado. People were coming up and asking me what I was doing. I fished it like an emerger when the caddis were hatching. It caught my best-ever trout in NZ- a rainbow from Flaxy Lake in in the Kaingaroa Forest. It is a smelt imitation and not what I would normally use at Matahina.
I fished a Black Rabbit for a while. After many missed opportunities, I finally nailed it with a good rainbow. Dan hooked a good brown on a Brown Woolly Bugger then a better brown trout on a Krystal White Woolly Bugger. He lost the latter after a while but we are counting that one. Then Dan nailed one on a White Woolly Bugger. Somewhere in between I got a good brown on a Black Woolly Bugger.
We had one last fly to try and it was my turn. It was a Krystal Olive Woolly Bugger in size 6. I must say I thought fishing all of these patterns on the edge without a bead to help with a little sink would be challenging. Turns out, it did not matter at all. You just need to adjust your presentation. I missed five before I landed my last fish of the morning.
It started to drizzle as we packed up.
We were filleting a couple of trout while having a beer before 1 PM. We had smoked trout shortly thereafter and man was it good! Tight lines!!
