Although I am already back in my work, my hair salon has been quiet as many people have still been away on holiday, especially international students. Actually, this is the Dunedin thing, the town of student.
So I just went another half-day fishing.
Beautiful bright sunny day!
Before I started fishing, I just replaced old shoe races on my wading shoes with $9.99 new ones. Not Simms official ones ,but should be good enough.
Because they looked going to be broken soon!
And also, the Vibram soles look kind of worn-out as well after I have heavily used these shoes for nearly two seasons. I don't know what to do about it. Maybe taking them back to Japan next time I'm on holiday to get the soles replaced via Japanese distributer Marverick??
The river was so quiet and I never saw any rise.
After the last fishing session, there were some rain. The rain must have changed the river I guess.
A big NZ's freshwater eel!
Finally, I found not a rising fish, but a jumping fish in a ripple falling into the pool, and caught it on a nymph. She looked jumping as if she was feeling too hot.
Then, I found the river condition exactly the same as the last day I fished with my friend from Auckland, the day when we could catch fish on Czech Nymphing only.
I changed the spool and the line system for Czech Nymphing and tried to fish only choppy runs flow into the pool down.
I didn't get any big one, but the same type of ripples were holding fish that only Czech Nymphing could work to make them bite.
Awesome river
and lovely browns
At the end of the day, I hooked up a big jack!!
It was probably 5-6lb nice jack, but as I was using tandem nymph rig, another free nymph got stuck on something underwater like submerged bush while I was taking these photos of my bending rod.
Ooooh, Nooo... I shouldn't have done this, should have concentrated on a serious fight rather than taking photos.
As soon as my friend from Auckland left, there were few rains and the temperture dropped. The river water even got lower than a week ago, definetely minimum flow at the moment ! But I had a good half-day fishing.
Although I had no chance to catch any big one on the day, I hooked up seven fish on, caught 5, dropped 2, hahaha...
There were some nice rising fish I could find during the day with few showers before cooler southerly came up from down stream.
Most fish were hens, weighed 1 - 2.5lb.
Most of them were still willow grubbers I thought, but actually different browns were taking different foods, like some were taking horn cased caddis and tiny snails only which means they prefer foods on the bottom, and some other's stomach contents were really mixed, such as beetles, lady birds and water boatmen, may flies...
Water boatman, tiny tiny one, maybe only 2mm in length?
NZ's lady bird, 3-4mm? quit tiny as well.
Actually, and surprisingly, most NZ's insects are much smaller than Japanese ones! even may flies, sedges, cicadas, lady birds, water boatmen and so on.... All of them are such small in size, even though NZ's trouts are quit big!!
The best fish of the day that I missed taking photos might have been a 3.5lb hen.
Once a southerly started to blow up, the river went quiet, but I could still catch some on nymphs as I had been watching where the fish were rising before they stopped.
This was the second best one, 3lb jack.
Not only a beautiful fish, but also a good strong fighter.
A cute and fat hen fish with a stomach of willow grubs.
I stopped fishing at 6:30 as it started to rain heavily.
Because of the cooler weather, I didn't have to do Czech nymphing like last time, and I found the day a bit easier getting more strikes.
Just need a few more rain I think to have a great fishing day with big ones, hopefully.
