Fishing: Tasty morsels, even if they're a bit furry

It was a dark, moonless night when Ruby Clark, of Otautau, Southland, got a superstrike she'll never forget.

She was fishing with her husband at a stream mouth at Lake Monowai, on the fringes of Fiordland, when the lure, instead of being taken down into the lake, headed for the stars and jerked the rod skywards. She was using an imitation mouse, and a passing owl had snatched it off the surface and flown off before realising something was fishy and dropped it.

At this same stream mouth my brother and I, using imitation mice, caught 14 trout averaging 2.8kg in the two hours just after dark. A few nights later, he and his mate landed 16 at the same place and in the same weight range.

It is not generally known that trout eat mice, but in fact, fishing with imitation mice with fly or spinning rods is practised from New Zealand's deep south to the lakes of Finland and the rivers of the Russian tundra. They are used to catch salmon in Alaska, bass in North America, rainbow and brown trout in Argentina and nocturnal trophy browns in New Zealand.

A large brown caught in the Nelson district in recent years had 23 mice in its belly. A 5.8kg brown caught in the Waikato River in the 1980s had 22.

Mouse fishing can be done in New Zealand on any trout-holding water at any time of year, but the best time is the rodent breeding season from November to March, and the best places are the beech forests when the trees seed extra heavily, about every 3-4 years.

The heavy beech-seeding years provide mice with an abundance of food and they proliferate. Exactly what they are doing in the water nobody knows for certain. Many probably fall in. One theory is that they go in after beech seeds which have been softened by the water and are easier to eat. Another theory is that they swim off in search of new territory during their population explosion.

Or maybe they just like to party up on shore, get drunk on fermented fallen bush berries and go skinny-dipping with their mates on a muggy summer night, blissfully unaware of the jaws lurking below.

Whatever, they are good swimmers. South Islanders Gavin James and Steve Fox, who have researched mice in the trout diet, have recorded one instance of a mouse swimming 2km offshore.

A deer-hair mouse used on a fly rod should be retrieved slowly along a bank or across a pool so that it leaves an enticing V-shaped wake behind it. A rainbow might slash at it. Browns often take it quietly and grab the tail first and pull it under - perhaps to drown it - then engulf it. Chomp, gotcha!

Various flyfishing mouse patterns are available at tackle shops, or you can tie your own out of deer hair, which floats well, and shape the head and body with scissors, first tying in a leather strip for a tail. Don't worry about eyes, ears and legs. It's the silhouette that's important.

For a spinning rod, the best imitation I've used is a rubber cat's play-mouse from a pet shop with a bit of boot-lace pinned into its backside for a tail, and a trace angled through from the mouth to the tail with a needle. It swims along with its head bobbing above the surface, just like the real thing.

And yes, I've heard of anglers using the real thing.

Around the world there are some wild and woolly mouse patterns. But this one, off the internet, would be hard to beat:

"When tying your mouse, pack the deer hair really tight. At the halfway point of the body carve a small cavity close to the hook shank. This can be used to house a tiny motor connected to the tail to give it that lifelike wiggle that fish can't resist, as well as adding propulsion. A hearing-aid battery can be used."