This was a trip that was donated to the Wild Sheep Society Convention, to be auctioned at the event in Kelowna last year. I was there for Friday Fun Night but did not partake in any bidding. Ended up purchasing the trip from an HBC member who won the bidding (cleaned out all my pm's, so sorry I can't remember who, but thank you again). The hunt was donated by Stacey Anderson of New Zealand Hunting Safaris. Stacey and his wife and family run a bed and breakfast north of Wanaka near Lake Hawea, they offered excellent accommodations and home cooked meals during my stay. The trip was a 3 day hunt for my choice of fallow buck, tahr or chamois and I was set on a fallow.
My hunt was booked for 3 days in Late May, with a week of fishing and exploring planned for the first week of my vacation. I drove from PG to Van as I had to deliver half a moose to my hunting partner. After cooking up some moose smokies and going through my bags one last time, I realized I had made a critical error…I had forgot my fly reels! Damn, but no biggie, instead of bringing 2 fly rods I would only bring my trusty 6wt and bought a replacement sage reel and new line at WSS and was good to go.
From there I was flying to San Fran and then Auckland and finally Queenstown. Was my longest flight so far but was very comfortable and wasn’t as big of a hassle as I expected travelling with a rifle. New Zealand Air definitely sets my standard bar, Air Canada sucks.
After arriving and picking up my rental suv, I received a text from my hunting buddy in Van, and realized I am a major dumbass… I had left my newly purchased backup reel AND binos on my buddies kitchen table. My first time realizing I forgot gear was mostly filled with optimism, but the second time was pure bitterness. Luckily there was a fly shop nearby where I was having lunch, and the price was only an extra 40% compared to the exact same reel I had just bought. So, naturally, I cheaped out and bought the cheapest reel they had. And then, naturally, the drag exploded on the first fish I hooked, fly line backlashed, fish gone…back to the store, exchange please, and left with another Sage 2200. Day One’s of my fishing and hunting trips typically tend to go about that well for me.
The scenery was amazing, took no time at all getting used to the left side of the road and all the roundabouts at intersections. The first week of my trip was spent travelling between Queenstown south to the bottom end of Lake Wakitipu, back north to Wanaka, east towards Christchurch and a few other spots in between.
Most nights were spent in the back of the suv with a couple of hotel nights. I met several other travellers like myself while fishing and had some great laughs.
Most of the rivers close to angling on April 30, so I focused on wading the lake shorelines and fishing a set of power canals. The local salmon hatchery releases 2% of their product annually into the canals and certainly draws crowds of anglers. However, when I envisioned NZ it was rainbows and browns, so that’s what I focused on. Nobody likes a crowd. The waters are crystal clear and after several failed attempts and missed fish, I had to examine my approach and slow things down. Standing up high on the banks and really scanning for sign well in advance of stumbling down and spooking them off. A slow moving shadow, a sip on the surface, a V wake, really thinking about where I would cast and the shadow of my line, minimizing back casts...looong cast sight fishing was the ticket and eventually I got the hang of it.
Fishing below the power canals provided a steady flow of rainbows and occasional brown. Was a style of fishing I was quite used to, bottom bouncing 2oz weights and fishing shrimp in the outflow from Power Station C into Lake Benmore. Most trout were in the 2-3 lb range and a gentleman fishing beside me hooked into a 34” lunker of a rainbow. I spotted some sort of insect hatch happening at the mouth of the lake and traded my spinning rod for my fly rod and a dry. It didn’t take long before an utter monster porpoised, mouth wide open, fly down. This thing was ugly, not even a mother could love it. Massive hook jaw, deformed mutant body, a garbage can with fins more or less. After catching nothing but 3 lb’ers all morning, I didn’t expect to hook one of these gigantic browns that I’ve seen so many pictures of. My 6x tippet wasn’t exactly going to turn him, so I held on and enjoyed the ride into my backing and he buried me and broke off in a distant weed bed.
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