Picked up Tom Schenkenberg from Turangi’s only 5 star lodge “River Birches” this morning and headed off for some back country fly fishing. I was going to take him to a small little wilderness river a couple of hours drive away for some dry fly but heavy rain en route changed my mind and we took the safe option of blind nymphing a nearby river instead. Not long after arriving at our destination Tom managed to hook and land a cracker 4lb rainbow trout that took him up a rapid around some rocks and had us dancing over boulders for some time before coming to the net. If I had remembered the camera then I could have taken a photo of it rather than of Tom back at the car showing how big it was. Tom then managed a smaller Rainbow of around a pound and a half before being bust off by another and then landing another nice 4lb Rainbow Trout that was very stubborn about coming to the net. Around lunch time Tom landed another nice 3lb Rainbow before being blown away by a 4 lb-ish freight train of a Rainbow that hit “like a ton of bricks” to quote Tom, before steaming off down a rapid and down river with us in chase for 100 meters or so before losing us. The final fish was a debatable one that hooked when I took the rod from Tom to show him why his cast and then mend wouldn’t catch a fish and what he should do instead – of course a trout grabbed the fly and hooked up a split second after he handed me the rod before I could even strip it in and then jumped a few times before spitting the hook on me. Tom thought that was a great way to end a fantastic days fishing!