Season Opening

by Karl Sawyer

Despite having to only endure a three-week lockdown during the latter half of winter and still able to get a decent amount of time in on the Tongariro River I was amped for the start of the new Fish and Game season which commences 1 October. Work commitments meant I was unable to fish the first but a plan was hatched with good mate Bevan Gedye to get into things on the second. We left Hamilton at ridiculous o’clock and headed south, hoping that getting to the carpark before daylight would give us first crack at things.

Fortunately for us we were the first there and despite fresh vehicle marks indicating there had been fisherman there the previous day I knew we would be in for a good day. Bevan hadn’t fished this particular stretch before and was keen to get into things, so I let him have first crack. The river looked in perfect order and not overly high, which was a little bit of a surprise given there had been some reasonable rain the week prior. It didn’t take long for Bevan’s indicator to dip and was soon into a feisty rainbow of around 3lb. By the time I had finished rigging up my double nymph rig Bevan had hooked another couple of rainbows, and he was starting to realise that I wasn’t all talk about how good the river can be. My first fish was a bit of a washed-up older rainbow which I picked up out of a little depression from the head of a run that just had to hold fish.

When we reached the next fishable pool, it became apparent from the lack of boot prints that the anglers fishing the opening day had concentrated on water closer to the carpark. This was a massive score for us as some of my favourite water was still to come, with what I hoped would be plenty of unpressured fish who hadn’t seen any flies for over three months. The next two pools both yielded three fish, with Bevan nabbing the first brown of the day. At a touch over 4lb, it was a clean silver fish in good condition, which was no doubt a reflection on the stable river flows over the winter period.

A short stretch of pocket water was next, and we both had turns hooking into some good fish with a 6lb rainbow hen that took me into the backing multiple times on its way downstream the best of. By about 10am we had already landed about a dozen fish as we approached a pool that is often stacked with fish. I made the fatal mistake of talking it up a bit too much, with only a fish each coming to the bank and another missed strike.

As we made our way further upriver it became apparent that a lot of the fish weren’t in the usual big pools and were holding in the smaller runs and pockets. I assume that this is because some would have been holding over post-spawning and the lack of pressure hasn’t yet forced them back into the safety of the larger water. The fish weren’t fussy to what was offered with Cadillacs, Simon Uglies and trailing Hares ears and pheasant tails doing the damage. I was trialling out my new Scott Centric 905/4 and Lamson speedster set-up after retiring my Scott S4 906/4 which had done a lot of mahi over 10 seasons.

Despite having a particular soft spot for the old S4 I was completely blown away by the centric. Light in the hand with plenty of power for throwing the double nymph rigs on long leaders, yet it performed superbly at close distances to some browns in some pretty skinny side water. The Lamson reel is super smooth, with a nice drag system, and balanced the rod perfectly. My Dutch heritage means I don’t splash out on the latest kit very often, but this time was a worthy exception.

With Bevan’s breathable waders blowing out towards the end of the stretch we planned to fish we made the call to turn back a little early and return downstream. Despite daylight saving having kicked in the prior week it was pretty dark when we hit the car. On the trip back to the Waikato we reflected on what had been a hugely enjoyable day, and perhaps the angling gods had smiled on us given that the yet then unknown further lockdown was just around the corner.

‍

‍