"DREAMING OF DOUBLE FIGURES", published by Trout & Salmon

June, 2004



I entered my last week in New Zealand with mixed feelings: I’d experienced some exhilarating days, sight-fishing to a host of big, beautiful trout in the most stunning landscapes imaginable. I’d caught plenty of fish, and I had no right to complain. Yet one fact gnawed away at me: despite hooking four different trout that my various guides had estimated at over ten pounds each, I’d yet to land that elusive double figure fish, the tiny hooks having heart-breakingly pulled free on every occasion. My scheduled fishing days were up, and I knew that I would be leaving without that trophy double-figure fish under my belt.

I’ve encountered many fishermen who like to adopt a high moral tone over the foolish importance attached to certain numbers – the ten pound trout, the thirty pound salmon, the one hundred pound tarpon and so on. Yet I believe that any really passionate angler secretly knows that there are certain magical numbers that turn a good fish, a great fish, into the fish of a lifetime. My best New Zealand trout weighed 9lb 2oz – a big, gnarly brown that I hooked with the last cast of the day on the fabled waters of Larry’s Creek; a fish that fought savagely on a size 18 pheasant-tail and 3lb fluorocarbon while the helicopter was forced to circle above us, waiting for a conclusion either way. It was a sensational event landing that fish, but it wasn’t the grail: the double-figure wild trout that I’ve long been dreaming of.

Restless, and desperate for one last try, I phoned Craig Simpson, one of the best guides on the South Island. Craig and I had shared a great wilderness trip on the last two days of 2003, catching stacks of fish and enjoying plenty of banter along the way. Craig has guided anglers to more double-figure fish than just about anyone in New Zealand, and he knows where to look. I fully expected him to confirm that he was completely booked out, but I got lucky – Craig had a cancellation and squeezed in a day for me: I’d have an early start and a long drive ahead of me but I didn’t care – I was going fishing.

Two days before we left New Zealand, I was up at four-thirty. As I loaded the rods into the back of the car, the frosty air was crisp and sharp. The grass crackled underfoot and the stars of the southern sky were still twinkling brightly as I headed north. Autumn was coming to the southern hemisphere. As I drove down the deserted highway that snakes through the Lewis Pass, I peered up at the mountains and saw that they were dusted with a substantial snowfall, the uppermost peaks bathed in the rich, rosy hues of the dawn. New Zealand’s unearthly magic weaved its spell one last time and I felt a heady mixture of euphoria and anticipation.

I met up with Craig in a little café at Springs Junction and, as we cradled our mugs of coffee, he seemed cautiously optimistic about our chances: the river was still dropping after long weeks of rainfall, but we could expect reasonable water-clarity and, hopefully, a few feeding fish. Most importantly, to Craig’s knowledge, no one had fished the river in nearly three weeks, due to the high water. We parked the cars behind the cafe and then waited for the distant hum of our ‘lift’ coming to meet us. Two sleepy octogenarian Germans came squinting out of their motor home and watched in amazement as the helicopter put down on the lawn opposite the car park, kicking up the loose grass and deafening us all. After greeting the pilot, donning the headphones and strapping ourselves in, Craig and I were suddenly ascending high over the frosty fields and into the remote backcountry of the south island. We lifted over a range of snow-bound crags dotted with tiny, shimmering tarns and suddenly a verdant green valley opened out below, still wreathed in the remnants of the morning mist. Running through the valley’s heart was a classic freestone river, rushing over riffles, squeezing between rock-strewn runs and tumbling into a series of mouth-watering pools. I was gazing distractedly into one of these pools when suddenly I saw a dark shape swinging across it: ”There’s a fish!” I blurted, astonished that you could see a trout from way up here in the helicopter. ”Look at the one below it!” enthused Craig, “I said they were big, didn’t I!”

Alan, our pilot, suggested we check the Department of Conservation hut – if another angler was here already, we would be obliged to fish elsewhere. ”There won’t be anyone in here” scoffed Craig confidently, but as we swung around a bluff, the unmistakeable sight of smoke rising from the hut signalled that someone else had indeed got here before us. My heart sank. “Better go and have a look,” muttered Alan. He put us down next to the hut and Craig stalked solemnly across the grass. A bearded, Scandinavian-looking gentleman opened the door, yawned, blinked at the helicopter and then shared a brief chat with my guide. ”Watch the way he comes back,” said Alan, and as Craig turned and skipped grinning back to the helicopter, I felt a rush of elation: “Just a tramper!” confirmed Craig with barely suppressed relief: ”Lets go fishing!”

Alan put us down a hundred yards from a promising-looking riffle, and as he whisked the little helicopter away into the clear autumnal air, we turned to face the river. Whilst I threaded the line through the rings, Craig went down to the water and peered in. I’d barely reached the tip ring when he called over nonchalantly: ”There’s one - about seven pounds.” I fumbled on a little hare’s ear and tiptoed down to the water’s edge. A big dark shape wandered back and forth, inches from the nearside bank. Craig grinned at me as he bit my fly off and tied on one of his “specials”. Craig and I fish well together, and five minutes later, we were nursing the lovely brown – just over seven pounds, as predicted – back into the crystal water. I felt confident – the fish had wolfed the little nymph voraciously on my first cast and Craig said that we could expect to see at least one double-figure fish today. If that fish was half as hungry, we were in with a chance…

By lunchtime, my early optimism was spent – the first hour had been good: we’d added an old, battle-scarred eight-pound brown to our tally, and lost another big strong feisty fish that may have been eight or nine pounds, right at the net. But since then we’d cast at numerous fish – some of them big - that hadn’t even blinked at the numerous flies we’d drifted past their nose.
Each one would play dead before finally ambling away into the current and out of view. One, a huge, broad-shouldered cock-fish, had bristled briefly at my tiny tungsten-bead nymph, and as it slunk off into the depths after a change of fly had failed to impress it, I felt like I was watching my last chance drift away.

We sat down for lunch, just upstream of a small gorge: Craig laughingly chided me for my “Captain Ahab” obsession, adding that we still had a few shots left. I gazed at the sparkling aquamarine of the waters gurgling below us and felt guilty for feeling morose in such a stunning paradise. We’d caught a couple of beautiful fish after all…and we still had three hours left.

We struggled across the frigid water and Craig bade me wait while he shinned up a bluff and disappeared into the thick brush beyond. He was gone a while, and I was gazing distractedly up at the snow-sprinkled mountains above when Craig came grinning back through the scrub. ”Big one?” I asked. “Come and see,” he winked and turned back up the incline. As I scrambled up, Craig held up a hand, indicating that I shouldn’t go any further. “There,” he pointed. I looked down into a deep, dark run, through the trees below us. I peered into that pool for a long time, whilst Craig waited for the fish to show itself. “There” he whispered. I saw nothing, just the deep, dark roiling water, constantly shifting around the green-grey rocks. And then, suddenly, magically, he was there…way down in the deepest shadows of the pool was the fish that I craved…the ten pound fish…the fish of a lifetime. Feeding.

I marked exactly where that fish sat and then crept back down the rocky slope. We talked through the cast and then, while Craig returned to his vantage point, I stripped out the line and measured out the exact distance by casting across rather than up the river. I started to false cast and gently put the line down; just wide of the thin foam-line I was looking for. ”A foot too far to the right!” confirmed Craig from his perch high on the bluff, his normally genial tone replaced by a raw-throated seriousness. I let the fly drift well past the fish, picked up the line and put it back. “Perfect” hissed Craig in an absurdly melodramatic stage whisper. I held my breath as the indicator yarn bobbed down those nail biting last few feet and then Craig suddenly yelled, “He’s coming ov…STRIKE!!!!!”

The indicator veered violently and I struck hard. Everything went solid and a split-second later there was a delicious electricity shuddering through the line as the solid unyielding resistance that might have been a fish and might been a rock kicked hard and came alive. The fish ran out into the main current and rushed downstream towards the white water of the gorge, but I was ready. Stumbling frantically to get below the fish, I bent the rod hard, low and downstream. The fish reacted exactly as I’d hoped, and, fighting the strain, rushed back up into the wide, glassy water. Rolling heavily, he fought for the far bank and I felt that familiar aching nausea as I spotted a series of jagged rocks lining the far edge of the river. However, instead of dashing into the sanctuary of the rocks, the trout sat deep in the pool and simply refused to budge, just as a hefty salmon might do.

I leant as hard as I dared on the fish, but to no avail. Suddenly, it dawned on me that everything was solid – perhaps the fish had shed the hook and I was dumbly attached to nothing more than an underwater snag. As I was about to wail out my ghastly premonition to Craig, now standing at my side with his inadequate-looking net, the line went slack for an awful moment, and then the huge fish catapulted itself into the air, the afternoon sun glinting on the tippet leading from its jaws. The rod wrenched over, the reel sang and I was still in business.

For perhaps seven or eight long, long minutes, the fish tore furiously around the pool while I looked on helplessly, my heart in my mouth. Then, suddenly, it raced towards me: I saw my chance and turned its head hard. Thrashing dementedly, the big jack came crashing onto a gravel bar that just cleared the water’s surface. Craig sprang into action and fell on the fish, but there was an awful moment when the trout rolled clear of the net and splashed back into the shallows, flapping wildly. Craig shot forward as the fish wallowed in the thin water, starting to recover its senses and energy. I lifted the rod and turned the fish’s head once more: there was a blur of movement and suddenly, abruptly, Craig whisked my prize into his net and held him triumphantly aloft. ”Ten?” I asked gingerly, embarrassed that it had become so important. “Of course” said Craig, grinning from ear to ear, but a tense, almost reverent silence fell upon us as we attached the scales. “Don’t forget, the net weighs one and a half pounds” cautioned Craig as the scales settled. The simple arithmetic took both of us a few seconds longer than it should have done, but suddenly we were both grinning idiotically.

We caught two more fish that afternoon – a stunning nine pound two ounce brown that fought like the devil and a six and a half pounder that sucked a big dry off the surface on virtually my last cast of the day. Both were memorable, but the fish that I know I’ll never forget was the big, bullet-shaped jack from that pool above the gorge.

It weighed ten pounds and four ounces.





Contact:

Craig & Kerry Simpson
Lake Rotoroa
Nelson Lakes
South Island
New Zealand

Phone: 0064 03 523 9199
E-mail: Simpson.Rotoroa@xtra.co.nz

Accommodation:

Craig and Kerry can organise accommodation in the area to suit your budget, but staying in one of the Department of Conservation huts in the wilderness for free, drinking Macallan and listening to Craig’s not-so-tall tales of the huge trout that still inhabit the south island’s fabulous back-country is, for me at least, the quintessential New Zealand fishing experience.

Tackle:

Travel light: In New Zealand, as elsewhere, much of the best fishing is protected by the most rugged, inaccessible terrain, and on some of the best, least-pressured rivers, you’ll do a lot of walking, wading, clambering & occasional climbing. Carry a minimum of kit, but, if you share my ‘double-figure’ hang-up, make room for a reliable pre-tested set of weighing scales and a good, tough little camera. Fishing with a guide means that, as well as having an expert spotter at your side, you’ll have good company, someone to share the burden of the tackle & camping kit, and perhaps most importantly, someone to help you if you get into difficulties. If you’re fishing alone, as I often was, make sure that someone knows where you are and when you’ll be back, and don’t take any chances – a broken leg could be fatal, if no-one comes looking for you.

Clothing:

Waders? Don’t wear any. A pair of “flats” style bonefishing trousers is much more cool and comfortable for the long walks involved, and besides, even the toughest Simms Goretex will soon be in tatters after shinning up rocky inclines. Modern Flats trousers dry in minutes, and a spare pair can be stuffed into a rucksack, taking up a minimum of space.



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