I have checked the rainfall on the regional council’s website and the cumulative falls so far suggest that the chances of catching a fish at the weekend should be fine.
I was taking a casting lesson on the Taieri at Outram Bridge on Thursday and the river was looking good — slightly peaty but clear and down to 8cu m.
It only needs to drop to 5cu m to be perfect.
I turned over a few stones in a ripple and there were quite a few mayfly nymphs on them.
As mayfly nymphs mature, they get darker and many of these nymphs were dark, suggesting that there will be a hatch at some point.
It could well be mid-afternoon, although it could also be in the evening as the water is warm for the time of year.
It is just a matter of being on the river to catch the hatch.
When there are mayflies hatching, there will be a fall of spinners as they lay their eggs. This usually occurs on the day after the duns have hatched.
This fall of spinners can occur at any time as long as it is calm, which is likely to be in the late evening.
Mayflies are weak flyers and cannot afford to risk being blown away from the river before they deposit their eggs, so they remain in the shelter of bankside vegetation until the wind drops.
Even just a few minutes of calm is enough to bring them to the water.
Equally, it just takes a few puffs of wind to make them disappear again.
So if you only have an hour or so to fish, dusk is the best time.
The rivers that look good for the weekend are the Taieri throughout its length, the Pomahaka, the Waipahi, Deep Stream and the Tokomairaro. I fished the latter at the weekend. It was slightly discoloured, making fish difficult to spot.
Although it was very windy, the thickly willowed stretches were relatively sheltered. Willows can make it difficult to fish but I reckon if I catch more fish than I lose flies, I am on the right side of the ledger.
I had caught one or two fish when I spotted a really good one feeding midstream above a tree lying in the water.
I was thinking I would be lucky to get a fly to it without spooking it, as it was only a couple of rod lengths from me.
On the first cast the fly was ignored, but on the second cast the fish slowly turned to one side and sipped it in.
I tightened on to it and in an instant, it had charged through the submerged tree and smashed my leader.
An inauspicious end to the day’s fishing.
Even more inauspicious was my outing to the Maniototo dams, where I hardly saw a fish and hooked and lost one.
Better luck next time.
