National News & Information > Features March 2008

At the end are the rainbows by Hugh Creasy

Ted’s steeple cast shot a nymph vertically into the air and he punched his rod tip forward to complete the cast. The nymph completed a loop at its highest point, not quite copybook casting, and a little good fortune drove it to the centre of the river where a trout had porpoised a few moments before.

Ted let an extra metre or two of line through the rod rings to give a little slack to the cast, allowing the nymph to sink in the water before cross-currents put drag on the line and ruined its natural drift. The pink indicator between his line and leader travelled down the food line, over the fish’s lie without provoking a strike. Ted retrieved his line and prepared to cast again.

The steeple cast requires the same arc as a standard cast, but it is tipped forward, so that instead of being between 11am and 1pm, the backcast starts at 9am and finishes at midday. The line travels vertically on the backcast and horizontally on the forward cast. It requires skill and practice, but once an angler has learnt the technique, whole new sections of water become fishable.

Ted was standing in an elbow bend of the river, with his back only metres from a row of poplars. The only other approach to the reach was from the other bank where footprints of many anglers disturbed the sand of a small beach.  I had tried casting from the there earlier, only to have the belly of the line caught in fast water and the nymph whipped across current in a most unnatural fashion.

 We could see fish in the tail of the pool just around the bend. They were rising happily, unaware of frustration caused by their presence. Ted had to cross fast water to get into casting position and I feared for his safety as he slid on weed-covered boulders. Once in position, directly in line with the fish, he pulled line from his rod tip and held it in loops in his left hand. It took only three false casts before he had enough past the rod tip to let go. It took real judgement to get the right amount of line out.

Fishing the tail of any pool is hard work, because the angler is standing in much faster water than the water he is fishing to, so the rod must be held high once the cast is made to prevent it catching in the current and whipping through the pool. Ted placed two near perfect casts through the pool before he duffed one, and sent the tail end fish into a fitful circle that ended with it quivering at the end of the queue. The other fish in the pool seemed unmoved.

Ted cast again, the drift seemed good and the second last fish dashed aside to take the fly. There was no need to strike because the line caught fast water and drove the nymph into the fish’s jaw. Ted played it through fast water, and the fish made a desperate burst downstream, almost alongside my position on the bank. I readied my net  and waded into fast water.

Ted gave the fish a little slack but it was still too lively to bring to the net. It was interesting being at the fish’s end of the line. The leader hummed in the water, pressure and stress had it at its limit. I could see the tail held stiff and to one side, so that pressure was maintained on the line without the fish having to expend energy.
Many fish, even small ones , are lost on a downstream run, and it’s the combination of the fish’s power and the power of the water that can tear a hook through flesh. Wether it is by accident or by design that a trout uses the current to its advantage I do not know, though it seems a bit far-fetched to credit a fish with a pea-sized brain a tactical advantage.

I neared the backwater behind a boulder where the fish was now abrading the line across the face of the boulder. A quick scoop with the net and the fish was captured. From the same casting position Ted took two more fish, the last of which he played upstream, wearing it out in long runs and leaps.

All this was on a heavily fished stretch of the Motueka River where fish are notoriously wary. Other anglers had bypassed the pool or assessed it as too technically difficult to cast into.

I congratulated Ted on his skill and also on the confidence he had in his ability to get a fly to the fish from a seemingly impossible position, and I realised I would have to hone my own skills to get the best of fishing from one of the world’s great trout streams.

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