Manic Mondays - Muddy Waters

As per usual my big weekend away fishing gets rained out. My buddy Tim and I had three days locked in fishing the upper section of a King Country river and the night before it hosed down, properly. After a fun / muddy quad bike trip in we settled in with a cup of coffee and assessed the less than ideal river conditions.

We’re used to this, it’s happened every time we’ve headed in there for some weird reason but apart from one visit we’ve always been able to get some good fishing in. At least it’ll keep us coming back trying to get that magic combination of low + clear + cicadas + late season fit trout.

Anyway, we still managed to have good fishing sticking with blind techniques and some obvious flies banking a couple of really good fish but losing the majority of them in the heavier than usual water (we both forgot our nets which didn’t help).

The competition guys would have had a ball as there were a ton of small fish willing to hit anything on offer.

Beer and fishing was the theme of the weekend but a few goats were removed from the local population and will be making a reappearance in the form of curries at a future date.

I was fishing the Scott Radian 4wt for the first time and was super impressed with how grunty it was holding a nice brown trout that had risen to a dry and sped off down the rapids. It was almost game over as soon as he streaked off but the 4wt really stood up to the task.

With the forecast not looking too hot for the next week or two I think we’re going to quickly start transitioning into our winter fishing, so away with the beer and out with the scotch!