A really inspiring bit of writing from Mr Andrew Bernard having completed a recent visit to New Zealand for the beginning of the trout season….
Mat, Gilly –
As a child, I used to wake early on Christmas Day, on my Birthday, and on other days when people would line up to give me stuff. Of late, I have woken before the sun for less positive reasons – flights, meetings, thoughts on presentations or interviews, the “how ” and “why” and “when” of office life. It was, therefore, a deep and atavistic pleasure to leap out of bed under the foreign sky of New Zealand, eager for a day of walking, peering into wild streams, casting a fly and occasionally connecting with trout.
I rediscovered a child-like sense of expectation and wonder that was once an easy part of me.
Of course, it would be hard to express this in most company without someone calling for the secure van, some burly but sympathetic men, and a medic with a large syringe brimming with horse tranquiliser.
Fly-fishermen, however, will understand.
Roused from hoggish slumber while the Southern Cross is still marking its territory; a simple fisherman’s breakfast of fresh-ground coffee, home-made granola, organic yoghurt, fresh bread, fruit, orange juice, scrambled eggs on toast with field mushrooms sautéed in butter and a hint of parsley, further coffee and toast with local honey (Mary and Jim are the best hosts ever), and out into the undisturbed country of Canterbury.
I am, I admit, a pretty poor specimen in terms of (inter alia) sense of direction and general navigation. In New Zealand I could not even pronounce the names of the rivers, let alone find them on a map, or tell others afterwards where I had been. So now we introduce into my adventure the calm and patient kindness of guides Steve Carey and Ian Cole.
How they suffered.
Pre-dawn chatter of startling banality from an over-excitable man in his mid-fifties, coupled with some Industrial-strength angling incompetence is not everyone’s ideal way to start a day, but Steve and Ian were remarkably stoic. Both had given up smoking before I arrived. Both are now back on 20-a-day.
We would get kitted up (I had nothing with me in the way of gear and tackle and trim, so Steve and Ian provided everything), waders, sunblock and rod, and head out to the back-country. Not a moment would pass without the sort of questions more normally associated with a 5-year old: “What’s that tree called?” (A willow) “What’s that bird?” (A chaffinch) “Are we nearly there yet?” (No. Just be quiet and look out of the window). But we did get there. And we did find rivers. And we did cast a fly. And we did catch fish. These we found in the Opihi, the North and South Opuha, the Tengawai, and the Temuka – names filled with the heady exoticism of a National Geographic magazine article.
There were many beautiful, buttery, dappled brown trout, sitting in the spring flow, carving effortlessly to and fro, picking food from the current.
A fly would be tied, and tippet prepared (often repaired, if I am honest) and I would lose myself in an ecstasy of fumbling as I cast to some leviathan. Little nymphs, black and deadly, pheasant tails, tiny and sleek, and juicy brown mayfly ready to sit on the surface and drift menacingly, heart-stoppingly, into the danger-zone.
I found I would hold my breath as the fly slipped towards the point where that grey ghost in the ripple, or the dark shadow under the willow, might take.
How could it get any better? Strong, sleek trout with fins like shovels, wary and smart in the spring water; a blue sky overhead, an upstream breeze and a cloud of tobacco smoke from a patient guide with a wealth of advice… This is fly-fishing as it should always be.
I have good eyes. I would, however, have spent much of my time variously walking past huge fish, or casting to rocks and logs in the mistaken belief that they would take a fly. The way that Ian and Steve can see their quarry is astonishing. I would rely on them sometimes to direct my cast like a piscatorial golden shot – a bit longer – a foot to the left next time – (realistically six feet to the left, but allow me some pride) and only then would I see the shape- a change in the texture of the water, a feeling more than a clear outline. Then things would get interesting. Cigarette consumption would rise. The fly would go out – and sometimes there would be a take; that moment where it all works, and a wild predator slips into our world on the end of a line. I cast and hoped, and cast and waited. A fresh New Zealand brown on a 5-weight is a joy; a long run, stripping line from the spool, a turn and a bow-bend on the rod; furious reeling, a second run and a splashing at the net – before unhooking and a return, photographed and admired, to the rush of the stream.
I lost a lot of fish, broken on trees and rocks, or in a surfeit of enthusiasm. Some disappeared almost at the moment of the strike, others just as we got them to the net.
“It is not”, said Ian, “the fish we catch that keep us going, but rather the fish we don’t”.
He’s quite gnomic, that Ian.
He is, however, exactly right. In a way – and don’t be disappointed in me – the catching of fish was secondary to the act of fishing. I stood in some of the clearest and cleanest waters in the world, I cast a fly at some of the most beautiful trout on earth, and I was privileged in the company of patient experts who encouraged and enthused. You don’t have to be the best angler in the world or even a good angler (I should know) to enjoy the great southern rivers and their extraordinary quarry. You just need to stand and marvel at what’s around you, and be prepared to throw a fly in the general direction of a fish, and be happy. Steve and Ian will get you into some trout; trust them, and trust the glory of New Zealand’s rivers.
Thank you for organising something that was much more than a holiday. It was a trip to a place that replenished the soul, and washed away the grime of stress. A trip back to a time where waking early was about anticipation and excitement.
Honestly, Heartland lodge was wonderful – Mary and Jim do you proud, and are very lovely people – and Steve and Ian are amazingly kind and great company. I laughed, and cast, and occasionally caught fish, but always, always enjoyed every single moment.
I can’t wait to do it again.
AB