Went heli-fishing yesterday with Terry Pratley and his sons Dominque and George. The fishing was relatively hard but not too bad considering it was both Dominque’s and George’s first go with a fly rod. The late summer sun being low on the horizon made spotting difficult despite the crystal clear water, leaving the guys with a tough mission for their first ever fly-fishing experience, but they coped well. Dominique landed a beatiful silver 3 pound rainbow hen that was site fished to, and father Terry showed them how it was done as the helicoptor was coming in by making the pilot wait a few extra minutes as he skillfully played his 5 and a half pound Rainbow Jack to the shore for photographing before a quick release. George got the hang of casting and mending well but unfortunately the trout didn’t want to play ball, though with has natural ability he will certainly land his first trout on fly before long. In all a great day was had despite the fishing being a little tougher than normal.

Had a little rain over the past couple of days but nothing substantial enough to cause a major run of fish up the Taupo tributaries

Strange as it may sound, the back-country fishing seems to be coming right again. Although I still havn’t located river 3’s fish, river 4 is fishing pretty well.

Fished 5 hours on river 4 though JB’s property to above D today with my friend Nick Bishop who only fishes a few days every year or two and has not done a lot of fly fishing. Nick managed to hook 16 including his first ever on dry which was a nice 1 kilo rainbow that took a 16PA. I only added 6 to the days total of 22 which meant Nick won some beers. Mostly rainbow trout averaging 3 pounds – I doubt if anything went too much above 2 kilos but then we didn’t see them all as some of them cleaned us out rather quickly. Most fish were caught on 14fbpt with a couple on the bbhc bomb. The normal Burgin sawyers didn’t seem to have as much action though this could have been coincidence.

Went fishing today in the Tongariro with a mate of mine from up North. Tried one pool in the upper reaches (bp) briefly this morning and Nick caught 1 3.5 pound freshish hen rainbow on a salmon egg glow bug. Tried a couple of spots around the braided water below town after lunch and Nick lost a good freshy while I landed an old recovery – both on pt’s. Another guy down there was doing OK in one spot with size 16 pt’s. Woud have to say the fishing is still pretty hard but then we didn’t fish overly long or hard either.

Conditions were pretty windy. Reports are that fresh runs are coming through and the fishing will just get better and better from now on. Will try some other areas with better holding water tomorrow and Thursday, would imagine there will be a reasonable number of fish in one of those areas which held good numbers early season last year and the year before. Wednesday will be back-coutry, hunting for river 3’s missing trout. Will also check out O a couple of times this week.

Was the start of duck shooting on Saturday, and an extremely slow start it was all around the country with fine weather unfortunately. The good thing about my shooting spot was that because the ducks were slow we were able to go fishing instead as well as deer shooting as their are a lot of ferrule/wild fallow deer around the farm. Managed to shoot no ducks but two stags!

Just finished two great days guiding with Paul Semour and Mark Hayes who work for the Attorney Generals Office for the Australian government. Paul had had a day or so’s fly fishing previously and it was Marks first time with fly rod in hand. After flying into Auckland airport at 6:30 saturday morning they arrived at Spot X (on my lodges pages) at around 10am and we started fishing at around noon on river 4 beat 4. Mark started by loosing two rainbows and then followed up by landing a couple of nice ones of around 2 and 3 pounds. Paul then followed with a lost rainbow of unknown size and then missed 3 browns on dry fly that sucked down the 16pa and 14kq – after a good delay they still failed to hook. 1 of the browns even sucked down the fly twice in one drift. Am guessing slight drag and bad luck caused the failied hookups. Shortly after, Paul lost another good brown on nymph – all the browns were in the 3 to 5 pound range, Paul finally lost another rainbow to end the day on an unlucky blank.

The following day was overcast and a little drizzly and we fished beat 5 of the same river. This time Paul got on the board early with a nice 4 and a half pound brown. During the course of the day the guys had a ball hooking around 20 trout mainly rainbows of which half were reasonable sized fish around 2 to 3 and a half pounds mainly and a few smaller ones as well. By the end, both Paul and Mark were casting well and I think they would have loved to have had more time over here fishing. I look forward to their return.