On Sunday, I went back to my home river to try some wet fly and streamer fishing again taking my switch rod.
I started fishing at 2PM, only three hours fishing at this spot where I tried to fish for the first time on last Sunday, however, I dopped a good one then.
I tied some flies after the last fishing. These are modified Woolly Buggers weighted with 3.8mm gold tungsten bead.
Also, this is a modified Trout Gum streamer, short body version. I changed a few in this fly, the tungsten bead size up from 3.3mm to 3.8mm, shorter Trout Gum body and the colour of the Salmo Web on the gill was changed from red to black to add some strong contrast of black and orange in mind.
Line systemwise, the same Rio Scandi Short 320gr but added heavier T-3 tip on the body, I was using inter tip last weekend though.
The first fish was on the new Wooly Bugger, black.
Are you a sea-runnner ? 17 inches brown looks like a sea-run.
Another one on the Woolly Bugger in different colour, olive/white.
Actually I got several more bites but I was unable to hook up most of them. Maybe small one's bites?
When I first came across this spot, it looked very good water to me and I think I was right. This stretch holds lots of fish.
After that, finally a good one put full bend in my switch rod, I got it hooked out in the middle of the fighting...
Nooooo....
It was a really good fish, reeled out about a half length of the whole running line like 20m, but I stopped the fish and was almost reeling back the line in.
Mmmmm, it's sad...
Somebody's decoy. The fishing season has ended and the hunting season has started.
And on Monday, I really wanted to try again as I dropped the good one the day before.
The river looked pretty much the same but something was different for some reason. I just got one bite that was too short to hook up, and got no bite for the next two hours after that, a lot quieter than yesterday.
Although I was kind of thinking to move, I just tried to move around in this stretch and kept swinging and stripping streamers over and over again.
And I finally got a bite when the Trout Gum streamer turned up from the bottom down stream.
Good fish, Strong fish!! I just felt the fish as strong as the one that I dropped the day before.
I got another big chance! I must land this one!!
I made it!
6lb, 24inches, awesome jack.
I'm so happy to hold it in my hands.
Winter fishing is hot!
As a matter of fact, I quite like winter fishing because fish tend to be larger even though it is quite tough, less number of fish to catch. It was the same when I was fishing in the North Island.
This part of the river is only 25mins drive from Dunedin to get to and I've already been finding here exciting enough to fish through this winter. As this was the second weekend for this winter fishing, I thought I could make some improvements in the way to fish. But on the other hand, I'm still not sure how fish move and feed in these lower reaches. In some large pools, I feel like fish may migrate to feed like lake fish because I sometimes get absolutely no bite even at good spots as if there is no fish at all.
Anyway it's just the beginning of winter fishing. I'm gonna keep fishing this river.
