Water levels falling

I walked along the river today looking for backwaters where I had see fish before. Unfortunately the backwaters were shrinking and the one of my favourites was occupied by a particularly obnoxious pukeko who alerted anything that might have been there. I did shoot some video of a nice fish though.

I had a humpy dry with a blood worm below it but could not unfurl it. Besides the fish usually came back. A while later I walked to the mouth of the backwater and a fish, I think the same one "pushed" by me to the open river.

Later I walked alomg the local stream. Saw 3 or 4 fish. They weren't too spooky. I lined a couple and they didn't spook but they weren't intertetsted in what I had to offer. I was trying a humpy with a collie below. I tried a caddis with the collie then the caddis by itself. After the linings I tried a midge but sighted no more fish. It was pouring and hard to see.

Success

After Christmas I took a journey to Cromwell and on the way back drove a short distance up the Ahuriri.

The day was awesome and river looked fantastic. Due to time constraints I didn't go to far up, only about 5km, and blind-fished downstream in some long, wide, knee-deep, warm riffles. I caught a 0.2kg trout on a Mrs Simpson streamer above a heavily weighted stone fly nymph. An even smaller trout self-released just after I got it out of the water. It took the stone fly.

The first larger fish didn't fight much and I thought I had snagged a rock. It ruined the Mrs Simpson.

I thought the decision to downstream a streamer and a nymph was unusual but it worked! I stripped a lot of line and used the current to take it hither and thither.

Next time I will try further up the river.

What are they eating?

Down at our local stream's bridge one or two small trout can be seen at almost any time of the day feeding voraciously under the willows. The downstream animal in particular is "lapping" away at the surface rapidly. I would have thought I could have caught it.

I have tried to put a range of flies across its nose: blue dun, beetles, etc. I have also tried nymph below it in the waist deep water. The most it has noticed is to stop feeding, briefly. Last night I went down with a net and took a sample of the scum line they are feeding in. There were lots of "shucks" there; possibly caddis judging by the time of the year and other writers but looking more like mayflies to my scientific (but new to angling) eye.

(Whilst I was there I also took a sample of the downstream glide where large numbers of baitfish (fingerling trout?) regularly leap out of the water. Mainly chronomids there judging by the wrigglers in the water and the plague around my face.)

Next I think I'll try more drys (kakahi queen, royal wulf, grey wulf) and maybe get over to the other bank and dead drift over the feeding fish. I find it hard to get the fly under the willows into the drift.