The Clutha, popular with anglers holidaying in Central Otago, is a bit on the high side but in the Albert Town area it can fish well in the evenings at any height.
A sedge hatch can be expected most days as the sun goes down especially if it is warm and calm.
Other options in Central are stalking lake edges with a fly or trolling from a boat.
The key to success when trolling is speed or rather lack of it. Moving at a slow walking pace is more effective than going faster.
And a tip for success when stalking the lake edges is to keep back from the water as fish can be in very shallow water and are easily spooked.
There is also the possibility of fishing sedge hatches on all lakes and rivers in the evening, an ideal way to work off the excesses of Christmas fare.
Beetles are around in big numbers at the moment both on the tussock lakes and lowland rivers.
On the tussock lakes the beetles are of the green variety and on the river they are brown.
Green beetles have been accounting for some good trout on Poolburn dam I hear.
I have personal experience as far as the brown beetles go, although it took a while for me to realise that was what was happening when I was fishing the lower Taieri.
I found several trout rising beneath some willows and covered them with a hare’s ear nymph on which I had already landed some fish. No response.
The rises appeared to be from the surface rather than below it so I tied on an emerger, not illogical as there were a few mayfly duns hatching at the time.
After covering a fish for some time, it surrendered and was soon in the net.
I had promised someone a fish so I kept it and quickly examined the gut contents to see if my deduction had been correct.
Not so — the fish was jammed full of beetles. I had not noticed any beetles on the water or flying so they must have been dropping from the willows.
There was a fish still rising beneath willows so I tied on a coch-y-bondhu, my go to beetle pattern.
A couple of drifts over the fish and it was taken, and a nice 2kg fish was landed and put back for next time.
I have also had couple of outings on the Maniototo dams and have had some success with damsel fly nymph and water boatman combination.
The rainbows from the dams are the best eating fish and I kept one and it had both damsel nymphs and water boatmen in it.
This made me wonder if fishing these two patterns was a mistake as a trout seeing them might not be able to make up its mind which to take before they were whisked away for the next cast.
More research is needed to find out
