New Zealand 1st Fish Of 2023 On Mataura River 03Jan23

Happy New Year to me... I hit the Mataura River south of Kingston with Paul Macandrew of Aspiring Guides today... Mt Aspiring is a high peak in the S Alps. This is a river I researched and specifically asked to fish. It is renown for good fish ~ it did not disappoint. It flows out of the huge (longest in NZ) freshwater lake at Queenstown called Lake Whakatipu ("WH" is sounded "F" here) on its way to the sea. Paul is just getting back into guiding after some down time and Covid but was a very fine guide for this area ~ plus he's a Scottish-descended dude who looks like Haine (I overlooked that). We got along well and my casting the 16' leader + tippet improved some from my last outing. We took a nymph rig on the RF Stripper and a dry fly rig on the RF True 5... unfortunately I forgot to bring the removable butts to the river ~ still worked but not as helpful or cool. It was a big fish day on the Mataura with the another big Scottish brown. I hooked another two large trophies but lost one in submerged trees and the other in undercut bank cover... dang it. Paul mentioned I did much better than 9/10 losses on this section on the 5X tippet we used. The fish shown was caught on a small willow grub... it looked like a tiny yellow foam banana (which turned nearly translucent in the water). That "season" is starting just now and formed from grub falling out of the overhanging willows during summer months. Others were hooked on a perfectly cast tiny stonefly nymph trailed under a "blowfly," which is basically a common housefly. It was a pretty hot day, yielding fewer hookups, but I did see 25 fish to target over the 1.3 mile "beat" we were fishing. NZ Fish & Game divides the rivers into sections called beats which people should only fish if no-one else is parked in the starting position of the "beat." It is a sound scheme for the best fishing experience for everyone ~ there is no crowding or upholing here in general and certainly no shoulder-to-shoulder timed casting. Though, there are fewer, but much larger, fish per distance for sure and the casting is a lot more technical, and difficult.

Paul gave me plenty of additional spots to try along the roads I intend to take next ~ though my drive times between destinations are pretty long so much of that won't happen. We met another guy as we returned to the car; Mike Camp who was a fine glass rod-builder and who'd just retired from NZ Air as a structural engineer/mechanic. His rods were very cool but very different. He'd built a keen small teardrop camper too for his retirement, which occurred just Friday (forgot the pic). Wow, he dropped the owner names of Winston Rods and Snake Brand guides as close friends ~ weird and cool. Another big fish day was celebrated with the decent NZ hazy IPA from Deep Creek, Crazy Hazy III.

Kala forged a alternate path this day and rambled throughout Queenstown again and up Queenstown Hill. We met up for a great Italian meal nearby the hotel at Giovi's. We'd researched and wanted to hit there but they were closed prior for the holidays. Quite excellent culmination to the day.