As a regular reader you might recall my tale of windy woe one Saturday, when the easterly almost blew me back to Greymouth. Irish optimism kept me out there persisting when most others would have flagged it. Fishing in an easterly for goodness sake!
The day did improve, the wind died right down and West Coast sunshine brought quite the stellar day. There were no other craft out when I arrived, but later a boat came into my patch of H2O, straight towards me.
It happened before when some dumkoff invaded the waters of a reach we were drifting down. It turned nasty as the ignoramus had no inkling of angler etiquette. The case comes up on Tuesday!
Back to this story – the boat kept coming with two blokes on board plus a good-looking red dog. As they got even closer one of them called out, not the dog, “is that you Ivan?”
At that point I realised F&G were out doing their job, so I fossicked around in my wallet for my license, why do we have so many plastic cards these days? I handed
it to Rob and then we had a bit of a yarn as you do. Then they moved on to see who else was silly enough to be out in easterlies, while I continued piscatorial activities.
Optimism grew as the wind dropped and it flattened off, so I began to see fish in the sunlit waters and at one point there was a movement. Out went the fly, the finny critter had a quick nip then stealthed rapidly to parts unknown. It began to be fun as more were sighted, then my phone’s ringtone sounded playing an old Four Jacks and a Jill song, so I knew it was our son Timothy calling from Funk Fish, Inglewood in the ‘Naki.
We were both on speaker phone so I could hear him rattling around in his kitchen prepping for their restaurant and takeaway shop and he could pick up the sound of jet skis and fizz boats now appearing. After a good yarn, fishing continued and I think he must’ve been a good omen, as there were fish everywhere. Just after his call TWO fish simultaneously charged the fly. This was getting good. Some of the brownies would look then turn away, so I contemplated changing fly or using a smaller pattern but thought one would take soon and it did. Great to see a nicely spotted Lake
Brunner brownie up close again, so it was released from the net while it was still in the water with no need to handle it.
Drifting along a bit further an elongated dark shape moved, followed by a good take, followed by a strategic mid-lake release! Things were warming up along with the temperatures and recalling something a mate once said, “fish where the fish are.”
I parked for a while and sight fished, with some trout so close, all that was needed was the leader flicked out.
First cast after lunchbreak there was another take, and this continued the program of catch and release until around 1.30pm when the trout went a bit quiet. I thought I couldn’t top this purple patch, so returned to the ramp.
On the way home I dropped in to see good mate Davey, who provided tea with local milk and their homegrown honey, plus a tour of their very extensive organic gardens and their exotic and native blended forest. Great end to a great day.
