Back From NZ

I've been home now for a few days and already looking forward to my next trip which is with my dad to Chile. But before I look forward, I should reflect a bit on a great 2 weeks in New Zealand. That said, it's also nice to be home, I missed my wife and kids a ton this past trip. The shop has also been staying busy and running smoothly, so I guess that's pretty fantastic.

We spent a couple weeks near Te Anau on the South Island, fishing for bows and browns around the region. The area is great in that there is ample access to more water than you could fish in several years. We tromped all over the place, hitting the favorites such as the Oreti, Mararoa, Hamilton Burn plus a lot of new ones for me including the Wairaki, Whitestone and Lake Monowai. I did some exporing as well and crossed the extreme Upper Aparima and Lil Burn off my list of places I need to go back to!

The fishing is always good in NZ, but the catching can be tough at times. It's hard to wait long enough on that hookset so somedays you end up with just a couple fish out of a dozen chances. The weather was crappy more days than not this year, but we still managed to find some productive places for sightfishing in poor light.

I think everyone got a fish of 6 pounds or better. I landed 3 between 7 and 7.5 and one of 8.5 pounds. Jones once again came out with the biggest, just shy of 10 pounds. He did catch that one while blind fishing so I still get some satisfaction in catching the biggest fish that was actually spotted first! ANytime you can catch trout that average around 4 pounds on dry flies, you shouldn't complaign...I know that I'm not.

I'm already looking forward to next year's adventure.