My river has been unfishable for a month now so it was time to try something different.
Michael invited Jack and I to go jigging on Lake Rotoiti. I had done a little jigging in the past but I focus my time fly fishing in the Rangitaiki River system. Jack had never been on Rotoiti nor had he ever tried jigging for trout. It was a lovely Saturday afternoon and conditions were near perfect.
I first met Michael when he was about fourteen or fifteen years old. He came to buy some trout flies. I could see how keen he was so eventually invited him to join Blair and I on a peafowl and turkey hunt. Let's just say he made me look fit walking up the hills and what an awesome night we had. Three days later after butchering all of the animals with his Dad helping, he was keener than ever. He became a part of the culling team and never looked back. We took him on a canoe trip down the Whakatane River and he shot his first red stag with an old .303 rifle with open sights handed down from his Grandfather. A happier young man will never be known. Oh, and, we made him walk the river and not float down with us. I could literally write a book about his accomplishments after that.
Michael has since become one of the best deer shooters I have ever known, obsessively refining his skills. Now, I make him look fit when going up the hills. He is a machine. He was always a trout fisherman, even before I met him, and we spent a lot of time together chasing those legless bastards. You might remember from things like Dry Fly Fishing Using Wulff Patterns, Casting a dry fly after work and many other of our You Tube Videos under Feathergirl Limited.
In the last few years we have not hung out much. Years ago he stopped coming peacock culling as he was too busy shooting deer. Still I have always been proud of what he had developed into with respect to all things hunting and fishing. Meanwhile, he got himself a little boat, geared it up with a fish finder and the fancy trolling motor and learned how to catch trout jigging on Lakes like Rotoiti.
This brings us back to last Saturday. He said the fishing was picking up again so off we went. He explained to Jack what to do and how to get to the right depth when he saw fish on the sounder. Jack very quickly developed his own technique, slowly moving the flies up and down. Next thing we knew, Jack was into his first rainbow. Then another and another with a couple of break-offs in between. The trolling motor caught him off guard and another broke off when the top fly got caught in the tip of his rod. Jack is a lucky boy to have been there that day.
Then Michael started hooking fish. He landed a seven, eight then a nine pound rainbow. Meanwhile, when I was not netting and bleeding fish, I tried a soft bait and a spinner. It is a challenge trying to fish these down to 25 metres and I had no luck.
Jack had a slow patch while Michael was catching all of the big fish towards sundown. Of course I was trying to give him advice to change his methods and watch what Michael did. The critical thing was to get the middle fly exactly to the depth where Michael was spotting the fish on the sounder. We worked on that counting the colours of the braided line.
Let's go back to the setup and advice Michael gave from the start. The rig begins with a two ounce weight at the bottom. Going up from that is one metre of ten pound fluorocarbon to to a three-way-swivel. The bottom fly is tied with about 15 cm of 10 pound fluorocarbon onto the three-way-swivel. One metre above is the next swivel with another fly and one metre above is the third fly. It is a lot to handle when it comes into the boat as the rig is so long.
The choice of flies is yours but we had success with the grey ghost, green orbit and Grant's Jigging Smelt patterns. I am sure we would have caught fish on many other patterns if we could have been bothered stopping to change them, crackup.
Well, I must say, what an incredible experience it was. Not only did Jack catch many fish, but he caught the biggest trout of his life. He even caught the last rainbow of the evening. He said to me the next day that I should get a boat like Michael's. I said why should we when we have Michael? We are so lucky in the Bay of Plenty, NZ to have so many opportunities and so little time to do them all...
Well, I smoked two and filleted four for my other son, Beau, to fry and eat. Michael took the other three. The smoked trout was fantastic with the orange flesh. Beau scoffed the first trout then put the other fillets (skin on) in the freezer to eat in the coming days. If you ever want advice on how to make trout fillets boneless, drop us a line. Tight lines...
