Yesterday, he landed his first salmon for two seasons from the Waitaki River, a 9.57kg hen now leading the Glenavy Hotel salmon contest.
Mr Coutts was one of three anglers who weighed in salmon at the hotel yesterday, a sign that, so far, the season is going well.
Apart from Mr Coutts, Trevor Luxton (Christchurch) landed an 8.69kg fish and Warren Heron (Glenavy) a 5.75kg salmon.
Hotel proprietor Mervyn Hall said so far this season 59 fish had been weighed in, compared with 20 in the same period last year.
But it is Mr Coutts' run of luck that was the talk of the bar yesterday - his 940mm-long fish and his new 5.5m-long cabin boat.
The salmon have to be weighed in cleaned, so Mr Coutts' fish probably weighed about 11kg in the river.
Mr Coutts has been fishing for salmon in the Waitaki River every season for 36 years, spending three to four months at his crib.
Usually he fishes at the river mouth but yesterday went out about 7am - "gentlemen's hours", according to other anglers in the bar - with a mate in a jet-boat.
His luck was really in because on the first cast he hooked up the salmon and about 10 minutes later had it out of the water.
Like many salmon anglers, he was coy about where he caught his fish, answering "somewhere in the Waitaki River".
But he was a bit more forthcoming about what caught it.
At first, he said it was "with a lure", but then he admitted it was a Z-spinner.
Mr Coutts in unsure what he is going to do with his boat, but is not interested in off-shore fishing.
He also did not know what kind of boat it was.
"It's in Auckland," he said.
Inquiries by the Otago Daily Times to the New Zealand Coastguard revealed it was a Tristram 521 Delux with a Yamaha 155hp outboard and included a fish finder - although Mr Coutts is doing all right finding salmon without one.
Mr Hall said the first fish in the competition was weighed in on December 19 - last season it was February 6.
The average weight of fish is also well above last season.
Last season, the heaviest fish was 9.97kg caught by Les Crosbie of Glenavy.
The hotel is also helping Central South Island Fish and Game Council research into Waitaki salmon.
It is recording the weight, length and sex of fish, along with the angler's name, and collecting scale samples and the head, both used for research into such things as the age and origin of salmon.
