It was a last minute decision to go fishing.
I’d been keeping half an eye on the forecasts and noted some settled stuff coming through, so off I went, although at gentlemen’s hours as befits a retired chap.
Hit fog on the way up the valley and then fell in behind several vehicles and a tractor towing a trailer and a ute. We trailed this thing for quite a time at 40-50 Kph before it finally turned off.
For a while it felt like I was back in Ireland where this sort of thing was an everyday occurrence.
On one particular day we came across 23 tractors on the narrow country roads and we developed a saying of “ABC,” (another b—– tractor) The fog was left behind by the time the lake was reached and the water was absolutely still, while the parking area had only 2 other vehicles with trailers, which augured well for a peaceful day of well-being enhancing, fishing. Five bucks in the honesty box at the ramp, then it was time to chug quietly out past the 5 knot buoys and onto a still, flat expanse of water with only the 2 other boats visible on the far distant shoreline of the bay.
It was a very nice West Coast Winters day and I began with a gaudy red and yellow streamer, but after a while got that feeling you sometimes get, that it was not going to be the goods, so I lost confidence in it and changed to a smallish Mrs Simpson. I rowed along for a bit, with the fly out the back harling, until I reached another favourite spot, where I found Mrs Simpson to be reluctant to immerse herself properly below the surface, however persistence paid off and she began to do what was required. Working along the edges and casting ahead of the boat brought a swirl and suddenly it was fish on, with a very lively Brunner brownie making determined runs and performing aerial displays, but it was eventually tamed, netted and successfully released. Shortly after that I lined a fish that was possibly the same one resting in the shallows, then still along the shallow edges, another rose to the fly close to the boat but scarpered away without eating the Mrs Simpson. Another swirl indication and I thought I would be in again, but during the process of getting the fly out it somehow wedged in the bow rope and before I could extricate it the fish moved elsewhere.
I rowed quietly into a side channel where 2 trout finned rapidly away to deeper water, but it was heartening to know fish were about. A slight breeze began to ripple the water and with a check on the time I saw it was just on 1pm, which is the usual time for the sou-westerly to spring up on Brunner in Summer, so I was a little surprised to experience it in Winter. However it gave an opportunity to drift back with it, along a section of the edges I had yet to try that day. A few casts brought a subtle take and a vigorous fight followed, then it was netted, but then it leapt clear of the net and was played out again.
The fly was too far down to extract so I decided it was a catch and keep fish, which pleased my Wife as she often asks if I’d brought a fish home. Back at the ramp I met a visitor from over the hill putting his boat back on the trailer, so when fishermen meet it’s good to have a pleasant chat about this and that, which is yet another positive aspect of being out there and doing it.
So how long was I out there? Didn’t watch the clock too closely but it would only have been around 3 hours and for a last minute decision to go fishing it was not a bad piscatorial experience. As I said to the visiting fisho’ at the ramp,”It doesn’t take all day to catch a fish.”
