New Zealand Paradise

tony
December 25, 2016
birds / Flyfishing / New Zealand / video

A beautiful run under native Podocarp forest. Two Rainbow Trout hooked and returned. Photo by Edin.

While images of winter dominate Christmas, even in the Southern Hemisphere, in reality it is midsummer here with lovely long warm days. The bright summer days are less than ideal for some aspects of photography but ideal for wading a river as the warmth brings regular insect hatches. Shortly the cicadas will begin singing, masking my tinnitus and triggering enthusiastically rising trout. A little over 27 years ago we arrived in New Zealand with a backpack that included a flyrod and 2 Olympus SLR cameras. Our original plan was to work for a while to support my fishing habit but somehow we never found a reason to leave and now have 2 precious children that we would never have had if not for the New Zealand Paradise we found. My 2 chronic illnesses of photography and flyfishing have endured, weaving a graph of partial remission and relapse. The arrival of the children and advent of digital photography pushed the fishing back behind photography but over the past few years Edin has developed an interest in flyfishing as well, and we make a few trips each summer when she is home. This past weekend was a hammock camping trip which gave us an evening and morning of fishing and ended with the magical experience of close contact with a pair of unperturbed Blue Duck/Whio. The video at the end of this post gives a nice view of what we experienced.

Dinner tastes great after an afternoon of wading and fishing.

Camping in our Hennessy Hammocks. Easy setup and comfortable. Only disturbance was constant Kaka calls through the night!

Edin fishing a run in front of a bright summer of Broom

In the early days I regularly fished this river through native podocarp forest and never saw Blue Ducks. The first time I saw one sitting on a rock at the head of the pool I was fishing I could hardly believe my eyes. Now it is quite common to see them and it is always exciting. I have made trips specifically to try and photograph them and walked for miles upriver in waders lugging a heavy telephoto lens and seeing numerous fish but no ducks. When on a fishing trip I seem to see more Blue Ducks and fewer fish. This trip we saw ducks and caught fish and even managed to get some photos and video footage albeit with only the wide-angle lens on the Fuji X100s. The experience though was an overwhelming reminder of our New Zealand Paradise with clear waters, native forest filled with bird calls and a rare duck undisturbed by our human presence and allowing a close approach. Blue Duck favour clear, cold mountain streams and feed on aquatic invertebrates so their habitat is perfect for trout. These wild watery places wash away the stress of life better than anything else I know and to have a place like this an hour or so from home is very special. A case could be made for scooping up a glass of the cold water and adding a splash of Scotch but why complicate things when you’re searching for simplicity.

iPhone5 photo of Edin photographing Blue Duck. She slowly crept up to within a few metres without the ducks being disturbed at all. One just sat there preening and the second swam toward her and hopped up on the rock after bathing in the river

My Blue Duck photo that features as the cover image for the species on NZBirdsOnline. Photographed on a tributary of the Whanganui River during a solo hammock camping trip.

Edin shot this video with the Fuji X100s after slowly approaching to within a few metres of the Blue Ducks. You can hear Tui calling over the rush of water. I was fishing over a trout that had risen between us but unfortunately couldn’t tempt it with a pair of Aoteapsyche caddis larvae imitations that had already taken 2 fish from the run. A little piece of heaven.