In my post about capturing a Blue Duck in flight, I alluded to the fact that the common thread flowing through my happy places is water. For Christmas I received a gift of Derek Grzelewski’s book The Trout Dreams from someone acquainted with my aquatic afflictions. The opportunity to read it recently rekindled embers of the reason I ended up in New Zealand.

Flytying was always a big part of my flyfishing. It is similar to the post-processing part of photography but could probably be considered pre-processing in preparation for a wilderness trip rather than processing images after a trip. After a few years break ( sadly I have not even bought a fishing licence for the past 2 years) I settled in at my flytying desk and tied up a batch of nymphs and Cicada imitations, not that I needed them, but as an exercise of anticipation itself.

A last minute decision saw me armed with my newly tied flies and a freshly purchased fishing licence aiming for the hills, the scenery and heather edged road reminding me of regular previous journeys. There are a few different sections of the river that I fish and I decided to visit the part where I had first seen a Blue Duck. The river was in typical summer mode, low and clear suggesting the fish would be in the cooler deeper runs and pools. There was no surface activity and prospecting with a nymph through the small riffles and pockets yielded nothing.

The first shaded deep pool revealed a large trout hanging in a small back eddy picking items from a chute between the branches of a fallen tree and beneath low hanging leaves. Its huge spade tail waved slowly and tantalisingly as it broke the surface while nonchalantly taking subsurface prey. Completely secure in the knowledge that its lair was inaccessible to a fly presentation. My attempts cost me two of my nymphs sacrificed to sunken branches.

Heading further upstream revealed 2 more fish but no takes so I retraced my steps and decided to spend a bit more time prospecting a fast deep run heading up to the pool holding the big fish. My theory was that it would be defending its pool and causing a backup of smaller fish below it. The best looking water held a fallen tree on the far side so any fish hooked would be a challenge. I set up a double nymph rig and managed to drift it along the bottom on the near side of the run. The indicator hesitated and the water erupted with a small rainbow missile. I managed to keep it away from the tree and soon had a strong little trout in the net. Neural pathways and reflexes from the past fully revisited and flushed clear.

Two drifts later an action replay but this time with a much larger fish erupting from the pool. This one screamed upstream peeling line from my reel before turning and heading back into the branch tangled run where it wove a macrame creation stealing my tippet and flies.

Revisiting the past is something we often try to do if the past was good and has fond memories. Sometimes we succeed and sometimes we are disappointed. This attempt was a success.

Four years ago I did a similar trip to a different part of the river with Edin. On that occasion we overnighted and found both trout and Blue Ducks.

Photos with the amazing little Olympus TG5, the perfect camera to take on a fishing hike up a river as it is completely waterproof.