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A walk back to my flat in the morning after a night full of stories and debauchery soon made it clear that the only thing to do at this point was to go fishing. Luckily there's a spring creek not far from school just south of Christ Church about 20 minutes away. After a sobering shower and frantic gathering of my net, fly rod, and lanyard, I headed to the Creek.
It was a place I had never been before, it was the first fishing outing in New Zealand....Ten years of dreaming about the fishing here and my feet were about to be planted on the banks of a quiet spring Creek. I walked the creek top to bottom finding the first fish within the first hundred yards. About a 23” brown laid up next to a weed patch just sitting there hovering in the slow glassy current. I stalked it from downstream and tied up a dry dropper rig. A caddis dry fly on top with a small weightless pheasant tail behind it. After one cast it spooked because of the plop of my nymph landing a few feet in front of it. Away she goes.
I continued walking the creek looking for fish on my right, but it's no use fishing while walking towards them. These fish have better vision than you. It's like sneaking up on a skittish mallard honestly. Amidst the brush-covered water there were giant trout hiding, but I didn't see any. I turned around and walked back upstream slowly, with more confidence now that the fish we're unable to see me before I saw them.
I noticed one sitting in the shade behind a Willow in a slow side edge of a trough. The fish was cycling around eating nymphs, moving left to right but staying in the shallow muddy edge where he was covered by the shadow of a hanging Willow. My heart and mind raced as I watched it. The anticipation of an impending dry fly eat drove my decision to tie on an ant. After a few blown casts I landed the ant close enough to the travelling Target to get him to notice my offering. He slid out into the sunlight, focused on the ant, lifted his nose up and called bullshit upon inspection. This fish would become uncatchable as he moved into the willows and out of sight after one more attempt at drifting my ant over him. The wind was blowing strong downstream making casting extremely difficult.
I was now thirsty and hungry, becoming delirious, and ready to turn in as the sun blazed down on me. I began walking faster as no targets showed themselves in the bright mid-morning sunlight. Right as I was about to make the turn for the car, I peered around a clearing in the brush to see this calm shaded area surrounded by log jams and overhanging tree limbs. I saw my first rising kiwi brown trout, and it was a beautiful specimen. A perfect, wild male brown trout quietly sipping in the soft light of the late morning. Inches under the surface, his head bobbed up and down, picking off random bugs with his beak. I immediately turned my shoulders back around the brush to hide from him. There was no way I would be able to cast at this fish was my first thought, after the initial shock of finding a feeding trout wore off. He was big, and in an extremely difficult spot, of course. I went around back and hopped over some logs to the edge of the river where I could watch him from a safer place. I lost sight of him for a few minutes only to be surprised by his presence a mere 10 feet from me as I stood crouched in the brush of this tiny creek.
He had circled 30 feet downstream to the face of a log jam and was cruising back up slowly towards his original position. I had a small area to cast directly overhead and had a size 16 parachute Adams tied on to 3x. It was a perfect storm. My heart pounded as I laid my cast into the foot by foot window of horizontal and vertical space between sticks and hanging limbs. He didn't even glance at my offering. He was on a mission to get back to his comfort zone and to keep feeding under the shade of the hanging tree. I waited and changed flies from a parachute to an Irresistible Adams, then to an ant, then to a PMX, finally arriving at the decision that I needed something very slim and small, a CDC red quill in a size 16. I switched to 4.5x tippet and tied on a new 10’ 3x leader with about 20” of tippet off the end. I circled around a few times, back and forth, to get a visual on him and watched his feeding habits. About 30 minutes had passed since I saw him first. The audible “gulps” rang out in the silence of the glassy shaded creek as he fed happily. The only thing was, how the hell am I going to land this fish?
As he slid in and out from under some low hanging tree limbs I noticed he was comfortable and in a rhythm. I found a spot in the middle of the two points up and downstream from where I was watching him. Walking in with my rod extended out through the trees and almost over his head, I spread the bushes apart, downstream of the fish about 12 feet at a 45-degree angle.
I pulled the fly line out of my rod tip about 8” and held my tippet and fly bunched up in my hand with my arm extended over the brush up in the air like the statue of liberty. My only casting room was directly overhead, and it wasn't too much. Just enough to cast my leader and try to punch the dry fly 10-15 feet away from me so that he would notice it land and hopefully come over to eat it. I gave it a shot but didn't have enough momentum from just my leader to deliver the dry far enough. Not wanting to violently cast in fear of spooking him I thought about what to do. I ended up opting to risk it and fired a cast a bit harder forward, stopping my rod tip abruptly. The dry fly parachuted down and barely made a ring as it fell on the water.
The fly went an extra foot this time, and by some miracle he noticed it land about 2 feet to the right of him and a just hair upstream of his head. As the current carried my fly down the glassy surface, I watched him meander out of the shadows and get intimately close to my dry fly. I knew it was going to happen. I inhaled deeply as he ate my fly with confidence. I watched his beak close down, satisfied with what he had just ate, the fish lowered his head down, and I drove the hook home shortly after letting out a big breath of relief. He immediately jumped in the air, brushing the tree limbs with his tail as he thrashed. I jumped off the bank into waist deep mud immediately applying upstream pressure with my rod parallel to the water pulling him away from the logs he wanted to go to. I had more control over the fish than I anticipated and was able to steer him around quite a bit, getting him close enough to try and net him.
I was exhausted from squatting and watching him for 45 minutes. I was so hungry. I extended my right arm back over my shoulder and tried to lift him to the surface as he thrashed. I went for the scoop but was about a foot short of getting him and would have gone face-first into the water if I leaned forward any more for him. He took off for the log. Shaking and my heartrate through the roof, I pulled back on him with confidence. But something went wrong, he wrapped me on a stick on the bottom, and my line stopped. I knew it was over but kept pulling on the stick, hoping something would pop free. But it didn’t. And I came to terms with what had just happened. I broke the fly off, promptly reeled my leader onto my reel and trudged towards the bank. I hopped up the bank and looked down at my lower body covered in mud. I booked it back to the car, knowing I was going to be able to eat breakfast and reflect on what just happened.
Even though I didn't get to hold him, take a picture, or get any recognition for what I had just done, I felt like I had accomplished something. I tricked him, a wild, wary, kyped out, spring creek brown trout over 5 pounds at the first creek access right off the trail. Had I not just taken a quick look, I would have walked right past him and gone home a hungry loser. Constantly looking over my left shoulder glaring at the water on my walk back had paid off. I had an epic battle and he won, but my heart was full, and my mind was clear. Now all I needed was a breakfast sandwich and a flat white coffee. As you can imagine, that was a good breakfast.