Blair and I put in the Rangitaiki River at Murupara sometime before 10 AM. I said we should paddle for the first hour or so until we got down past the junction with the Whirinaki River. Blair would have none of that. He wanted to fish all the way down. I warned him it was going to be a very long day. If you just paddle down to Rabbit Bridge, it takes a solid five hours. Add on fishing time and it drags on...
I have said it before and I will say it again. This is not a river for a mediocre paddler. Even in a raft you will be in the shit unless you know what you are doing. It's not that it is full of big rapids like the stretch through the Kaingaroa Forest. It is that the water flows fast and there are many tight turns with lots of obstacles in the way. We had to cut out some trees and even stop and assess some sections before continuing. We swore to bring a chainsaw next time.
It was not shit-hot fishing today. It was hard work even when doing everything right. Blair has come a long way with his dry fly fishing but he still has much to learn. That may have contributed to our slow start. He wants to cast a fly to every single spot in the river. For a guy who knows how to navigate white water better than anyone, he does not quite know where trout are likely to be as we float along. I have been trying to teach him for the last 20 years but he is a bit slow.
I put him in some sight fishing situations and he missed the strike on some easy ones. Then I put a dropper fly below his big dry and he got some action. I eventually put my rod together and had a play. I agreed they were not rising to the big dry as well as expected. Then I caught the Blair disease. I missed take after take and realised I was having a pretty-shit day in terms of hookups. Of course, it was awesome being out and all of the conditions were pretty much perfect.
We got to a run where we could see at least a half dozen good fish. After missing one then dropping another, we took a different approach and I picked up one of each flavour. I was pretty happy wit that. So the rest of the way down I let Blair use a spinner. It was tough to get a rise. He picked up a bunch that way and they were not big.
We got out after 10 hours on the water. It was a long day but still a bloody-good one.
I am a huge fan of flies with rubber legs, especially in summer! The profile just seems to add that X factor, whether it is a dry fly or nymph.
