By jove! What a romp The Rod had in the River Dochart last summer, frolicking through the bucolic landscape in pursuit of the smallest trout known to man. It should come as no surprise that his next adventure would be literally the opposite in every way: on the opposite side of the world, chasing massive trout, in a truly epic and severe landscape! Behold, blood-knot brothers of the line, for it is nothing less than Lake Coleridge, New Zealand!
Harper River mouth
The Rod and his prodigious brother Haas saw that the (normally massive) nor'-wester winds were lying low, and took the opportunity to spend a couple of days chasing massive trout, on the massive lake, in the massive landscapes of the North Canterbury High Country.
Map of Lake Coleridge with locations marked in purple
Day One
Their first stop was the Ryton river mouth (marked 1 in the map above), where disappointingly the river was but a trickle. But, nonetheless, The Rod did mostly catch a massively small salmon on a hare's ear nymph (it wiggled off at the last)
Ryton River mouth
The winds were picking up and they weren't catching anything more substantial, so they moved on to the Harper River mouth (2) which also produce a massive lack of success. Starting to worry that the legends of Lake Coleridge might be the more mythy types of legend, they went slightly further west to the Oakden Canal mouth (3) ... and lo'!!, The Rod caught a lovely rainbow trout on the first cast, using a Mrs Simpson fly!
Massive rainbow being played...
... and displayed
This was by far the biggest trout that The Rod had caught on the fly in the wild, and being a trout of the wild and feisty variety, took quite a bit of playing to bring in; running several times back out towards the lake and making good work of the drag control.
Once the formalities were concluded The Rod and Haas continued fishing the area for a bit but nothing more was forthcoming from the darkening waters. They drove back to the wonderful Benlea Cottage and dined on the fruits of their labours; trout, instant noodles and fine southern ale.
Buldak "*ss burner" noodles, trout and ale
Day Two
The next morning they woke reasonably early in order to catch the morning action at the Harper mouth again. It is said that most fish are caught on Lake Coleridge in the first couple of hours' of daylight. The Rod caught a lively rainbow trout on the first cast with a spinner
"Walk it out"
Trout being gently returned by fisherman with great hubris expecting to catch many more.
The next couple of hours produced nothing further, so they went back to the Oakden canal mouth which also produced nothing, apart from an enlightening conversation with a Czech fisherman who had caught a 7lb brown trout in the area a couple of days' previously.
Oakden canal mouth
The wind was then starting to pick up and get stronger, which wasn't a lot of fun for fly fishing. After a couple of fruitless casts with the spinner at the top of the canal they headed back south.
This looks nice, but it wasn't
At this point they thought they would try "one last spot", which from the map looked like it would be sheltered from the wind. As luck would have it, it was and it delivered the most productive couple of hours' fishing in The Rod's illustrious history, albeit with the spinner due to lack of back cast.
Haas with a lovely lake trout
The Rod with a lovely brown jack
One rainbow got away by bending the hook open!
The Tasmanian lure can move very erratically in the water if pulled too fast, and The Rod caught this (possibly somewhat uncoordinated) lake trout by surprise, hooking the trout in the dorsal fin when the trout had presumably taken a swipe at the hook with its mouth. The dorsal fin is very tough, and the hook was well attached, so the trout ran and The Rod had the strangest time pulling the trout sideways out of the water. He honestly thought he'd caught a whale at first; the trout was able to run rather like a dog on a very long leash and so it took quite a while to coax it out of the water so that it could be quickly photographed, detached and returned.
A lake trout, foul hooked on the dorsal fin. "Let's go for a walk".
The Rod "holding the leash"
The Rod and his dog
That evening The Rod and Haas retired to Benlea cottage early for some celebtratory trout, noodles and ale and The Meaning of Liff.
Day Three
The nor'wester was really picking up so The Rod and Haas headed back towards civilisation, stopping briefly at the Rakaia Gorge bridge for some fruitless but scenic stunt-casting in strong winds.
The Rakaia 1
The Rakaia 2
All in all a very fulfilling trip. Lake Coleridge is highly recommended for a fishing getaway, just be sure to check the weather.
Verily, The Rod has been wandering many years, spreading The Word and bringing forth his likeness realised in Little Rods running hither thither. How long has it been since he caught a trout? Perhaps not as long as it may seem, but certainly these trout are worth reporting on. Not for their size, for they are indeed minuscule, but for the delightful and bucolic setting in which they were pursued and the mighty company to be had in a great re-union with The Doctor, Phil.
Behold, a bridge! And a tent on a car!
The Rod arrived a day before his compatriot, but was not left wanting for company. His days were blessed by the peaceful swimmings of a badger touring its domain.
Ah, but his nights were mightily disturbed. At first The Rod thought some demonic Scottish wilderbeast was lobbing typewriter sized boulders into the river. After some correlation with events witnessed the following day, he determined that they were just the mad splashings of the badgers, smacking their tails against the water having a "Mine tail splash is'th bigger than thou'ths" party.
Nonetheless, he got some sleep and went down river to try his luck the next morning. It is worth saying that the weather was mightily un-Scottish in Scotland that week. Warm and sunny with light winds just strong enough to keep the midges at bay, it was Beyond Utopian. Several weeks of warm weather had in fact let the water levels drop to very low levels, at which point the larger trout decamp to the lochs. Unperturbed, The Rod cast onwards and within only a few minutes had landed his first trout of the trip:
Admittedly a bit on the small side, but from here there's no doubt that the only way is up!
A bit further downstream The Rod stalked a trout rising at the bottom of the V in some small rapids with great success. A very fine specimen of a very small brown trout.
(Left photo: tinder profile, right photo: reality?)
Fret not. This trout was very quickly returned unharmed to the water after its portraits were hastily taken.
But then, the telephone did ringeth and Dr Phil declared himself to be in the area and ready to join forces on this epic battle of man vs trout. And so we walked, and so we casted, and behold, what scenery!
But wait!
Man can't survive on endless fruitless casting punctuated only by the occasional capture of a minuscule baby trout, no matter how bucolic and magnificent the surroundings are! Man must eat, and if suitably sized trout aren't in the offing then what is a man going to do? Eat the forbidden cheese I say! The mildest cheddar known to man!
Yes, mild cheese, mixed with other things. Some vegetablish in nature, some not. This disturbed Dr Phil somewhat, as he seemed to be used to one or t'other.
"We dun eat tha' 'round 'ere"
But, let's be clear... all shackles of society had been cast away the very moment we had stepped foot on the undulating green grasses of the banks of the Dochart River. We were wild men, living a wild balanced-diet dream, and thoroughly sated with all the best that the Tescos veg section had to offer, it was time to settle into sleeping bags and watch the sun set on the might(il)y (small) Dochart River!
God knows The Rod dreamt of fish that night. Big fish, small fish.... mainly small fish. We needed other distractions on this curious hunt, so the next day we decided to start being more scientific in our explorations, by pointing at things.
A beaver was here
This tree is fluffy
The Rod hooked a fish here that wasn't small
This insect has probably survived because of its massiveness, in comparison to the trout.
But, I hear you ask: "what insights can The Rod can share as to the fly fishing techniques and tricks that have achieved the best results on this lovely river?" Well, I'll say to you this:
The spider pattern was very popular with the fish, although they usually turned away at the last minute, like indecisive Ceroc dancers. You would get the splash of a strike around the fly, but nothing on the hook when you struck. Good sport, of a sort.
.
Greenwell's Glory was a pattern that had been spoken of as being productive on this river, and this was borne out too, on a smaller scale of course.
There was a lot of walking involved, indeed we covered many miles in a day. It was pleasant, but vigorous. And, of course, mightily bucolic.
The next morning we feasted on things both vegetable-ish, and not. Save the porridge for the house-bound, we shall dine on ... this!
And, more fishing! I jest, but indeed we had spotted a couple of not-tiny trout and they did give us good sport.
But then sadly, as quickly as the tiny trout had come to the fly (sometimes), the end of the adventure lumbered towards us and we made preparations for a return to civilisation. True to the wit of this work of fiction, The Rod would claim that we went for a swim
And then it was time to return to our families and tell tall tales about The One That Got Away, That Wasn't Small, That Lived in Bucolic Surroundings.
After a few mirthless, meritless outings The Rod is pleased to report a successful outing on the sea near Dartmouth to fish a few tasty mackerel out of the English channel! Our vivacious vessel for the day would be the inimitable Saltwind, captained by the equally inimitable "Dave".
On the way out to sea the chop progressively grew choppier and we passed some delightful historical buildings. We passed seagulls and sailboats. Certain crew members passed some of their lunch!
And then before you knew it, we were fishing the sandbar. It was slow going. Our prawn baited hooks bounced along the bottom of the ocean being completely ignored by everything.
An hour of 'drifting the bottom' later, we had turned up nothing so our venerable skipper decided to dial up the intensity by introducing some 'mackerel feathering'. Dave had an extremely productive mackerel setup - two plain hooks with a trio of fluorescent green beads above each, weighted solidly with lead at the bottom. The rig is constructed using 60lb line and is notably absent of feathers.
Dave demonstrated the technique: drop the line to the bottom as fast as you can, then quickly wind it up again, using the hauling technique. Invariably a mackerel or two would attach themselves to the hooks. The Rod had a crack at it to ensure there was no sleight of hand and indeed the method works. Before long we had a bucketful of mackerel. Behold the crystal clear depths of their eyes!
The mackerel were gutted and whisked back to dry land to be presented to a hot flame..
... with most satisfactory results ...
Served with potato gratin and steamed broccoli (broccoli being a TELTHS favourite)
After dinner we enjoyed toasting marshmallows on the remaining embers of the fire... The Rod has has a particular technique to offer for this - use Two Rods in order to have rotational purchase on the fast melting sweet...
