It pays to check the Otago Regional Council website before you head out. The one factor that is not immediately obvious from the website readings is the clarity of the water. Generally, if a river is dropping it will also be clearing and the longer it has been dropping the clearer it will be.
As for the clarity affecting the fishing, from the fly angler’s point of view if you can see the riverbed in 40cm of water it is clear enough to fish. Spin fishers find the fishing better when the water has about half that clarity. Live bait fishers do not need to worry about clarity. When I was at school and it rained heavily in the night I would bike down to the bridge over the Coquet and if it was dirty brown, I would rush home and get my worm gear organised and spend the rest of the day on the river fishing the eddies along the edge. This method usually produced the most fish in my first few seasons fishing.
The rivers that are looking good at the moment are the Taieri and the Pomahaka. The lower Clutha is still very high and slightly discoloured. Of the smaller streams Deep Stream is at a good height and so is the Tokomairiro.
Murray Smart and I continued our fishing on the Maniototo dams last weekend. We started at Rutherfords Dam which produced the goods the previous week.
It was a nice fine morning with little wind. Rises would have been easy to see if there were any. In fact, there were some rises but very few and far between.
But working on the logic if the fish were there last week, they would still be there whether we could see then or not. Murray started well with a couple of 3kg fish and I managed to hook one and lose it in the weed. We stuck at it and I hooked another fish and managed to land it. I caught three small fish that were stocked about three weeks ago and they seemed to have adapted well to their new surroundings and were in great condition.
I am sure perseverance is important when fishing the dams. It is not often that fish are caught soon after starting — at least not in the first few minutes. This perseverance is just as important when moving around a dam.
When we are fishing them, we know that fish are constantly on the move so it is a matter of chance that both fly and fish are close enough together for the fish to see the fly so the longer the fly is in the water the better the chance of it being seen. If you start fishing a spot give it at least 20 minutes before moving on.
