Even if your favourite river is too high to fish there are plenty of still waters to choose from.
I have heard good reports about the fishing on the Loganburn dam and Lake Mahinerangi, and with fine weather predicted for the weekend they could be worth a visit.
Of the streams that could be worth fishing, the small rain-fed waters of East and South Otago seem to be the best bets, along with Lee Stream and Deep Stream.
The two rivers that are dropping very slowly are the Taieri and the Mataura, both of which will take a week of settled weather before they are at a good fishing level.
Last week I wrote about the Waipahi and the pending gold medal competition.
Conditions were marginal at the start on Saturday, the water was coloured, although not too high, so our intrepid anglers sallied forth full of hope and expectation.
The weather deteriorated and some competitors had to endure hail and thunder.
Luckily, we on the lower river missed the worst of it, but eventually the river coloured up and started to rise rapidly. Most anglers had packed up by mid-afternoon, except for Bruce McGavin, who stuck it out to 5pm, only being driven from the water when hypothermia set in.
Matt Pettersson had three fish from section seven to win easily and, just to rub it in, had the heaviest too.
Les Gibson, on section five, had one fish for second and Bruce Mr McGavin’s efforts paid of with one fish for third. A total of seven fish were weighed in the average weight was 1.3kg gutted and gilled.
There was much discussion about the day’s fishing and the state of the river in general.
Ivan Steel came to the weigh in for interest’s sake, even though he had not competed.
Ivan is an expert angler and has won or been placed many times since first fishing the river in the 1970s. He fishes the river regularly and has noticed the drop off in the number of fish in the river in recent years and the lack of fly life, especially mayflies.
I saw two mayflies on Saturday and the cold southwesterly conditions are usually good for a hatch of duns.
The ones I saw were spinners and probably hatched the day before. There were few sedges about and some damsel flies. The one fish that I caught had only sandy cased caddis in its gut.
The lack of small fish in the river is a worry, as there will not be any big fish in the future. The Waipahi is suffering from loss of wetlands — it rises fast and drops quickly to record lows.
Last season, the river dropped to its lowest recorded level, although I notice this has not been updated on the regional council website.
Still, anglers live in hope but are hopefully not dying in despair.
