It has been a long winter and spring as usual and we have not been trout fishing since last autumn. For us it was about harvesting feathers for the Feathergirl business. The meat was a bonus and our freezers are full of all sorts of goodies. Fishing generally takes a back seat until the end of the hunting season.
Well, hunting is finished so let the fishing begin! Dan and I shot out to Lake Matahina after work on 2 December to test the waters and grease our elbows really.
We launched the canoe at the dam end and I paddled along so he could cast a bead head krystal olive woolly bugger to the edge of the lake. This is the go-to fly for every lake edge we fish and it works everywhere. No tippets were changed and fly lines had some memory to work out but we did not really care as we were casting a fly again. There was a little wind to start but it calmed as dusk approached.
Dan was into a small rainbow within about 10 minutes. I was not expecting that so soon. This time I forgot to bring the net so landing fish in the canoe was going to be challenging. We made our way across in front of the dam and up the western side. As usual, Dan forgot how to cast. Like most people, he is good at the back cast but fails to load the rod forward. The double haul is tricky to master so he was left wasting energy try to force his casts. People haul into their back cast then forward cast with slack line in their other hand. I made him stop and cast with only one hand with one length of line. He soon figured it out.
We had lots of strikes and saw plenty of fish rising, especially on dusk. We caught both rainbow and brown trout of varying sizes. It felt good to cast again and even better to catch a few fish. Matahina looks to be on fire this season. The video tells the story; have a watch.
