I've definately tried my best this year, but with a number of blank days under the belt, a bunch of NZ's best rivers covered and some of NZ's best fishermen to help me along the way I haven't caught any of the really big browns that have been floating around the system.

So here's a wee tribute to all of the guys who did manage to land a few of these suckers and prove to us all that it can be done.

My brother Rob Vaz, had no problems out doing his brother on a recent trip into Southland.....I was on this river in November!!!

Hamish Murray of Auckland - Showing he's still got it under control with a stunning west coast brown. Hamish mentioned that this was the smallest fish in the pool.

Zane Mirfin of Strike Adventures put's countless clients onto trophy trout. This time he thought he'd have a go himself. The result an 11lb beauty.

Nelson's Cameron Reid with a double figure fish taken with friend and Murchison guide Peter Carty

Chris Dore is one of the countries leading producers of trophy fish for clients, here he snuck in a cast for himself with his new Scott G2.

Al from Queenstown with a double figure brown caught from a high country river on a cicada pattern.

Rob with another massive brown from his South Island adventure.

There is no doubt that a bunch of these big fish have gained their size due to bulking up on mice. What's great to know is fish in this kind of condition will most likely last through the winter and be in feeding mode come next summer......well that's unless these guys intercept them before then.

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.