This will be relatively easy at the moment, as most waters are in a fishable state.
Choices will be around stillwaters or running waters, rivers or streams or possibly a combination of the above.
The warm weather at the moment has seen an increase in damsel flies on both stillwaters and the slower reaches of rivers.
Trout take these in two ways, the most spectacular being when they jump out of the water to grab them mid-air or the more subtle sip from the surface when they alight on the water.
A dry damsel fly imitation can be used, especially when the trout are sipping them from the surface.
When they are jumping from the water a damsel fly nymph works well, just plonk it near the splash and retrieve the nymph with short pulls.
The hits are usually hard, so use a strong tippet.
Dave Curtis, from Waldronville, sent me a picture of a spectacular trout he caught on Mathias dam on a damsel fly nymph.
This dam has great damsel rises from both brown and rainbow trout.
Back to the topic of planning. On Wednesday morning the Regional Council website had the reading of 5cumecs for the Pomahaka at Leithen Glen, which looked ideal for a day’s fishing, as the river was falling. What could go wrong?
When I crossed the river on the Clydevale to Waipahi road I was shocked to see it was about as discoloured as I had ever seen it, even though it was as low as the website had shown.
Usually, rivers clear from the top down and as my destination was the SH90 bridge I thought (hoped) that would be fine. Wrong. The water was still discoloured, too dirty to fish.
I then checked Kelso bridge. It looked better but not ideal so I moved to a spot several kilometres upstream and that was better still but not ideal.
I knew the Mataura and Waipahi rivers were in good order but thought it would be a challenge to catch a fish on the Pomahaka, so I decided to stick with it unless I panicked later in the day and headed for the Waipahi.
I started fishing a weighted nymph up through a likely looking stretch of water and almost immediately caught a fish. Things were looking up.
But after two hours of fishing without adding a scale to the tally I was beginning to have doubts.
Then suddenly there was a trout rising in the middle of a long flat.
One snag: I was on a bank about 4m above the water. No, two snags: there was no way to get down to net it. Sorry three snags: there was nowhere to get back up again.
Anyway, the fish took straight off, then I saw a log to slide down to with a possibility of getting back up, and I lived happily ever after.
