Opinion: Rivers rise and fall but fishing fine

Fishing conditions will be good in Central Otago this weekend.

Rivers have been up and down a bit this week, but not enough to spoil the fishing.

Most waters are looking good at the moment, but there is some rain forecast for late in the week - fingers crossed that there is not too much of it.

I mentioned cicadas a couple of weeks ago, and the ideal sort of weather for them is what we are experiencing at the moment, so make the most of it.

Any of the tussock lakes will be worth a look over the next month or so when the weather is warm and preferably calm.

The calm is for the benefit of the anglers rather then the fish.

If fishing at lower altitude is your preference, there is plenty of scope: everywhere from North Otago to Southland is providing waters that are in good order.

If you like fishing new spots, there are lots of small streams around that contain trout that are well worth catching.

Such streams are rarely, fished as anglers tend to think that the best places are in the back of beyond and take a lot of effort to get at.

I remember once staying in a motel at Kaikoura and fishing Lyell Creek, which the motel backed on to. I caught several nice trout behind the shops on the main street.

There are such places throughout Otago, and half the fun is exploring to find these hidden gems.

As I mentioned last week, I was running a fly fishing course for Southland Fly Fishing Club at the weekend.

The weather played its part and we had a fine but breezy day for it. The water was in good order, medium level and clear.

We spent the first couple of hours on Sunday morning practising casting above Wyndham Bridge, which was sheltered from the strong south west wind.

Over the years we have had people catch trout during the casting session. It did not happen this year, but I hoped it was not an indication of what would happen when we started to fish in earnest.

There were quite a few mayfly spinners flying around during the afternoon, but no rises to them.

The class mainly fished mayfly nymph imitations and did hook one or two fish.

Any fish that were hooked were in the ripply water. We kept one fish for demonstration purposes and not surprisingly it was full of mayfly nymphs, mainly pale immature ones.
The fishing can only get better, I hope.

I had a quick look down the lower Taieri this week, below Outram. The river was a little higher than ideal at about 8 cumecs, and slightly peaty.

I expected fish feeding on willow grub, but only saw one rise a couple of times. I did spot a couple of nice fish in a backwater and managed to catch one of them, so it was worth the effort.

The river was rising a little but is dropping again, so another visit is on the cards.