Tag: New Zealand

"We're fortunate to enjoy 3 months fly fishing the South Island of New Zealand each year. On each trip, our time, we're completely engaged in the fly fishing, the landscape, the birds, beech forests, tussock lands... and we simply lose ourselves during that time. Of course, the fly fishing is spectacular - both easy as and tough as, but that's how it goes...

Amelia Jensen: "Our friend Devan loves to get into the fancy angles of fly tying. Every time we get to fish with him he brings us a few new flies that he's played with in hopes we can catch a fish or two on them. When he gave us a handful of hoppers we immediately thought of this stream in New Zealand at the peak of summer. The trout could think it a...

Squaretail: The Definitive Guide to Brook Trout and Where to Find Them by Bob Mallard is a complete guide book to brook trout. From their history and habitat to tactics and techniques for fishing for them, this book has important information for anglers of all levels of expertise. With a foreword by Ted Williams. Stackpole Books [Hardcover] (July 26, 2019)...

With little competition and few predators, New Zealand brown trout can grow to epic proportions. These prize fish sometimes reaching a meter in length and weigh up to 5 kilos.  And they have developed monstrous appetites and "a bloody-thirsty penchant for mice," as this classic BBC film shows. See a related video about the history of brown trout in New...

“Yous fellas fishin'?” a Maori guy asked on the shore of Lake Otomangakau. I said we were having a look. “Plenty a fish here, bro. Big bastards, too. But bloody hard to catch, ay.” He was lean and hard, dressed in a bush shirt and hunting shorts, both of which had a lived-in, heavy-use look, and his legs and arms were scratched with bush lawyer and...

IN THE MORNING we started up the river, zigzagging against its meanders, linking up shoulder to shoulder for the crossings, stalking the tails and eyes of every pool. The middle parts of pools, sandy, deep and slow-moving, were impossible. The fish, like submarines, were either parked right at the bottom or finned leisurely in circles, nymphing among the...

HAVE YOU EVER BEEN on a fishing trip, long planned and much anticipated, where nothing seems to go right for you? You arse up just stepping out of the helicopter and give yourself a good one on the shin, a bruise that over the following days blossoms plump and purple like a Baccara rose. And that’s just the beginning. You promptly trump this with another...

Self-Conscious Trout MOST OF WHAT has been written on fly fishing for trout is based on a single premise: Trout are intelligent, suspicious, even capricious creatures that are wise to our tricks. But that’s not all—it seems the harder we try and the more flies we throw at them, the harder they are to catch. For a lot of us that difficulty is precisely...

Have a question you want answered? Email it to us at [email protected]. Question: I’m kind of a wimpy traveler, so I hate to go places where they don’t speak English. (I know...it’s embarrassing; that’s why I’m not including my name and address.) Part of it is that I like to bring my non-fishing wife, who doesn’t like wandering around without...