Kiyoshi Nakagawa is the 2010 National Fly Fishing Champion having stormed the field with 82 fish taken during competition weekend on Lake Kuratau and the Waimakariri and Waihou River's.

Kiyoshi or Yoshi from Newmarkets Rod and Reel is the 2010 New Zealand Fly Fishing Champion

The Top Three, Yoshi for Gold, Arron West for Silver and John Bell for Bronze. All consistent top performers in New Zealands competition fly fishing scene.

A well deserving champion. I wonder what will be Yoshi's next challenge?

The results board, a stagering 801 fish caiught by the 18 anglers over the 5 3 hour sessions. Helped along nicely by Craig Farrar's 44 fish in 3 hours session on the Waihou River.

Thanks to Kyle Melnyk from Auckland for the photographs.

At this time of the year even our most remote back country rivers have had a pounding, making it hard to find water and fish that haven't been thrashed.

We all have this issue, it doesn't matter how many places you know. I often find it useful at this time of the year to work on different parts of the river than what you would traditionally do. For the next few weeks water temperatures are still at their peak and fish have tended to have been caught and or scared from many of the slower easier pools, driving them into many of the tight and hard to get to nooks and crannies in a river system. So with a little more thought and a fair bit of adventurous wading you'll soon find out that the rivers aren't now void of fish but simply that the fish have crawled into smaller and more intimate pieces of untouched water.

This brown came from a small gut of water ahead of a great looking pool..........typical for this time of year, we didn't catch anything from the pool and all of the note worthy fish were found in more obscure pieces of water.

Another important thing to do at this time of year is drop off the flash and flambouyance from your fly patterns and stick to clean and simple natural flies......... the fish above fell to a nymphomaniac in the new natural colours.

Mike Davis, explores a side stream of a main river system in search of Untouched water with his Scott S4 9' #5.

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.

This warm weather seems to have really brought on the insect hatches. And on our stillwaters there is no insect more prevalent at this time of the year than damsels.

Here are a few pics from Gary Lyttle of Hunting and Fishing in Taupo fishing a prolific damsel hatch on one of the central North Island lakes........ the fish don't look too shabby either.

If it's not obvious at this point what the fish will be feeding on, you should probably be thinking about another sport.

In heavy hatches like this trout will often lock onto damsels and ignore anything else.

Although damsel nymphs are prolific in times like this, don't forget about fishing an adult damsel imitation. Fished in the surface film a slim red dry fly can be leathal.

Takes on a damsel nymph can often be aggressive as fish hunt down these mobile nymphs as they work their way towards some structure to emerge from.

Take your time when playing big fish on small flies, especially around weed beds. Keep your rod up and an even smooth pressure through the rod.

With rewards like this cracking rainbow, it's totally worth taking your time to get it right. Visiting US angler Johnny Schuster looks more than a little pleased with his efforts.

Thanks again for Gary Lyttle of Hunting and Fishing in Taupo for the great images.

From the 29th to the 31st of January a bunch of decended on Middlemarch for the Annual FFF Conclave. As always we all had a laugh, threw a few loops and all came home having learnt a bunch of different things about fly casting, tackle and drinking beer in front of camp fires.

Bob Wyatt is the guy who started the Middlemarch conclave and the inspiration behind it. It's a credit to Bob that we were all so well fed and looked after during the whole 'clave that it was hard to leave.

A regular attendee, entertainer and instructor at the Conclave is Queenstowns Chris Dore.

From "Once in a Blue Moon" fame Carl McNeil filmed a few things and helped a bunch of us with our casts. In my mind Carl is NZ's leading authority in fly casting........little wonder why he is one of the few people globally who hold's the FFF Master Instructor Certification.

These funky stables created the perfect venue for the event. For $50 attendee's got two and a half days worth of instruction plus four meals and countless other treats.

A bunch of us ran classes throughout the weekend. I ran my class on Spey Casting with Single and Two Handed rods.

Chris Dore ran a great class on presentation casts and line control.

Other great sessions were run by Peter Morse from Australia and Hans Weilenmann from the Netherlands.

in this shot of Chris's session you can see the carpark, it's a great place to bring your camper or Unimog. Or if you're a soft Aucklander like me, there are motel units available.

Daniel Isbister put together a great casting tournament, with hoops to cast through, barrels to cast around and numerous tricky targets to hit. Next year there are rumours of an egg and spoon race also.

And if casting rods and hanging out with a bunch of mates during the day aint cool enough, then drinking a few beverages of choice and sitting in front of an open fire is the perfect way to end a day in Middlemarch.

Middlemarch is positioned smack in the middle of Central Otago which in my mind offer some of NZ's best fishing opportunities. I made sure I tagged into my trip a couple of days with Chris Dore from Queenstown's Trout Safari's. I can't remember the name of this river, but if you manage to make it down to next years conclave I'm sure there will be plenty of guys there who can head you in the right direction.

Wanaka's Hamish Bartlett works a great looking run on one of the local rivers.

Gin clear rivers and blue top days, this is what summer fly fishing is all about.

Oh and the odd one of these makes it all worth while too. Hopefully we'll see more of you in Middlemarch next year.