Heavy rain at the end of last week knocked out most rivers and streams for the weekend after they were looking good for most of the week.
Fine weather this week has most waters at a good fishable level for this weekend, fingers crossed, as a sudden downpour could mess things up. Being positive I think that the picks for this weekend are the Mataura and the Pomahaka, although the Taieri and the Waipahi are close behind.
Because of the early spring and trees being in full leaf once the weather fines up, rivers drop quickly due to transpiration the mechanism by which trees take in water from their roots and pass water vapour out through their leaves. A heavily willowed stream loses thousands of litres a day this way.
Last weekend I fished the Waipahi Gold Medal and drew section 29, the lowest section which runs from just below Waipahi township and the Waipahi's confluence with the Pomahaka. I started and the confluence and the water was not inspiring as it was quite brown and running just under 7cumecs which is at least a couple of cumecs above good fishing level. The main positive was that it was relatively sheltered from the strong westerly.
However, I began fishing with positive thoughts and a black woolly bugger. I fished the big pool above the confluence for over half an hour to no effect and moved up to the next pool and tried a gold bead head nymph which produced a trout of about 500g. This was not going to win a medal so back it went. Shortly afterwards I caught another a bit bigger but still not a winner so back it went too.
Things got really rough after that as I battled through broom over head height and after a while had to leave the river for about 1km to get round the worst of it. Back on the water fish were conspicuous by their absence. And so it went on until it was finishing time.
As usual in the Gold Medal someone somewhere found feeding fish and the one that found the most was Geoff Stanbridge, who weighed in three fish for 3.84kg and not only that, one of them was the heaviest fish for the day at 1.42kg.
The results were Geoff Stanbridge 3 fish for 3.84kg, 1; Robbie Natta 2 fish for 2.43kg, 2; Bruce McGavin 3 fish for 2.08kg, 3.
There were 23 fish weighed in at an average of just under 1kg by 38 anglers. A hard day by any standards. Ah well, there is always next year.
