Saturday was the first annual Rudd Classic run by Auckland's Rod and Reel. The event is a well run catch and kill rudd fishing event, focussed on having a laugh and raising funds for the New Zealand fly fishing team.
For those of you who've never seen one, a Rudd is a small carp (course fish) that inhabit most of the Waikato Rivers hydro lakes, but none more so than our venue Lake Whakamaru.
The concept of the event is that anglers can pay to join a past or present NZ team memberton their boat for the day to learn a few tricks. At the same time targeting rudd gives anglers a great opportunity to catch a bunch of fish and put those techniques into practice. Proceeds go towards helping the team attend the next World Championships in Poland.
With a clear misty morning we new we were up for a blue top day. What we didn't realise until getting to the waters edge is that the lake level was ultra low, creating it's own challenges.
Issue number 1 with the low lake level was launching boats, luckily the boys all toughened up and got their feet, boats and cars dirty without any complaining.
Yoshi from Rod and Reel and his boat partner John Schuler tackle up for a rudd raging session.
My boat partner John Duncumb and I came last in the Rudd fishing comp as we kept catching these things.
John getting distracted again from the rudd with another nice Whakamaru brownie.
Blue skies, plenty of hungry brown trout. Whakamaru turneed out to be a great trout fishery, with stacks of fish that seemed to respond well to a variety of techniques.
This was one of the better fish of the day, we caught 95% brownies all over shallow weed beds. This one fell to an olive sparkle minnow.
Ok, so John and I did pretty badly on the Rudd catching front but for the day 11 teams caught 129 Kg of Rudd and seeing as those little puppies don't weigh much that's a stack of fish.
With 29Kg of Rudd, Neil Barnett and Tony Houpt were the clear winners. Thanks to Rod and Reel, Feather Merchants and Manic for the prizes.
If floating around in a boat on a great day wasn't enough then savouring a beer with a bunch of great guys at the end of it certainly was.Thanks to Kyle Melnyk for the pose.
If you want to learn more about competition fishing here in New Zealand, the current NZ team and up coming events then check out the Sport Fly Fishing NZ Website for more info. Thanks to Paul Dewar of Rod and Reel in Auckland for putting on a great event. |
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