Opinion: Cool nights, hot days make for good fishing

There has been some good fishing this summer.

Cool nights, hot days and settled weather has provided good fishing conditions over the past week.

Hot weather means there is lots of insect activity during the day, but cool nights keep the water temperature down in the mid to high teens, a range in which fish are the most active.

There is rain forecast for the weekend, but not a lot, so hopefully it will still be fishable.

Again, on warmer days there should be cicadas on the water on the tussock lakes, and on rivers there will be mayflies early and late in the day, as well as sedges from dusk and into darkness.

Where there are plenty of willows trout are feeding on willow grub throughout the day.
Last weekend I fished the upper Taieri where it is very low and clear.

I like to fish new water every now and then, so on Sunday I walked downstream from the car for an extra 15 minutes which turned out to be one complete meander of the river.

It was still rather cool when I started fishing on the new meander and there was no wind.
The sun was low over the horizon and there was little cover on the banks to hide my silhouette.

Consequently, I spooked several fish and had a couple follow the fly without taking it.
When I reached the first familiar pool, I saw a rise within range and it took after a couple of casts. Not a big fish, but it was a start.

At the top of the pool there is a nice ripple where the water drops away below a gravel ridge.

The same fly drifted over the drop off produced a good fish of 2kg.

This same fly was a diving beetle imitation which I decided would be the fly to fish until something indicated that a change would be needed.

For a while after landing that fish I saw no rises and had no takes when fishing blind.
Then I came to some flat water below a weedy ripple where several fish were rising irregularly.

I waited for a rise then plonked the beetle near the rise then gave the fly a few quick pulls which produced two fish netted, one lost and a miss.

By one o'clock I was ready for lunch and sat and watched a likely stretch of water for rises while I ate my sandwich.

One did rise but dropped off a few seconds after it was hooked.

As the day warmed more and more damsel flies appeared on the water.

Eventually trout began to leap from the water taking the damsel flies in the air.

The damsel plonked and twitched did the trick again, this produced several fish in the 1kg-1.5kg range.

It was approaching 5.30pm by the time I got back to the car, or rather almost back to the car when I saw a dimple rise on the opposite side of the river.

The diving beetle did the trick again, with a fish of 1.2kg.

A good way to finish the day.