When the Weather Doesn't Play Ball
- 14/05/2026
Written by Nick King
The descending storm clouds brought a monochrome aspect to the Opening Day dawn. Patches of fog had us playing peek-a-boo with the bedraggled surroundings.
The wind, gusting and dancing on the face of the weather front, drew patterns on the ruffled water and the rain fell in a staccato rhythm that suggested it would be a sporadic companion for the day.
"Almost perfect conditions for duck Opening," commented my laconic mate, Bruce, as he pulled up his collar.
"Yep", I replied. "Just a shame that it's the start of the fishing season."
If there's one common and defining feature of our fishing and hunting fraternity's spirit, it is that we are eternal optimists. When floored by the fickle fist of fate, we forge ahead in the sub optimal conditions of the day in the eternal hope that next year may provide a sea-change in our fortunes.
One of these twists of fate regularly cast upon us would appear to be that our two highly anticipated Opening Days – October 1 for trout season and the first Saturday in May – quite often seem to swap the desired weather that expectant licence holders require for best opportunity.
Opening Day of trout fishing, best served by anticyclonic calm and glorious October sun, can instead bring with it biblical maelstroms and sub-zero temperatures, where lines freeze in the guides, winds howl like a lonesome dog and your chosen river is too thick to drink and too thin to plough.
Fast forward to the other Opening Day, hunters wishing for a bit of 'fishing season chaos' are stranded with the beach-towel-and-picnic-basket weather that the anglers would have given their eye teeth for seven months earlier.
The resultant huge high, blue skies, dead calm and excellent visibility that we can be left with on duck Opening can plummet success as decoys sit like Van Gogh still life's on mirror ponds and even the flappy ducks and butt wigglers take on a fraudulent hue. The first whiff of gunpowder can find ducks climbing to 64,000 feet and heading out to sea, or making other strategic arrangements far from the frazzled hunter who, at the time, can be seen far below in stark relief disrobing and searching the maimai for sunscreen.
This pivotal point in waterfowl season proceedings is where an Opening Day can head two ways. Resignation and defeat, or the implementation of a pre-arranged contingency plan.
There's nothing at all wrong with capitulating, cranking up the barbie, putting the feet up, getting the remote-control boat out on the pond and praying for a bit of last light action in 10 hours' time. However, if Opening Weekend is about sticking a year's supply of fat greenheads in the freezer then the moment for alternative action is at hand.
What action? Where is this action? And how can the troops get amongst said action when all the preparation was focused on the pond?
Well, instead of looking out over the pond with doleful eyes and wishing for a ranger to turn up for a licence check just to break the monotony, it's time for 'a cunning plan'. This is where prior planning will pay dividends. Leading up to the season it may pay to think about backup missions for this contingency.
Are there any nearby creeks or streams on the property, on another block of land, or in the area that you can arrange to jump shoot as an alternative? Even drainage and irrigation ditches can hold a surprising number of tucked away birds that, an hour or so ago, read the ponds tea leaves and bailed. The dogs love this sort of hunting, and the exercise is good preparation for those moving on to upland birds as the season develops.
If you've got a party of mixed age, you can place the senior, less mobile, members as blockers where you expect birds to fly out, and then the younger ones who can still touch their toes can begin the doubled over stalk to surprise the inhabitants of said creek.
Bruce and I once slithered though fresh Friesian cowpats, over a considerable distance across a dairy farm paddock, en-route to a concrete water raceway that had become increasingly 'quacky' as the settled Opening morning's inaction progressed. In what was perfect weather for hot-air ballooning enthusiasts, our original pond setup and decoys were not producing; no matter what we did to try and entice the high-flying, and very suspicious birds, we failed.
Endless circling before departing had left us and our callers drenched with spittle as we tried vainly to drag a few foolish juveniles into committing. As this continued, we began to notice the odd bird dropping in over at the raceway in the distance and, after an hour or so, could hear the joyous cacophony of happy ducks, likely bragging to one another how clever they all were to avoid the hunters' guns.
Thus, we threw a spontaneous 'Plan B' into action, left our maimai and began the sloppy, thistle infested, cow-pat mined crawl across 250 metres of no-man's land.
To be honest, we expected at any moment to get busted by a panicked late arrival or one of the regulars sticking their head over the edge of the concrete lip. On we pressed and at some stage we realised we were actually going to make it. The nervous expectation ratcheted up to a barely containable level as we found ourselves up against the concrete wall, literally centimetres away from what sounded like all the world's ducks. We looked at each other, both incapable of wiping the almost painfully large grins off our faces.
Check the guns, safeties off, and we stood up. The sight that revealed itself on the other side of that low concrete wall will forever be etched in my mind. Almost a hundred ducks froze in unison.
For one brief moment, not one of them moved. Then followed an eruption of feathered mayhem.
Modesty prevents me from revealing the combined tally of ducks that all chose to fly directly away from us from a starting distance of three feet. Suffice to say, by going to a Plan B, we rescued a luckless Opening Day in five short seconds of crazy action.
Obviously the lion's share of hunting effort goes into Opening Weekend, and the weekend's weather dictates to a degree the success of classic maimai-based hunting. This can be much enhanced by having alternative plans included in the preparation and planning. Scouting another likely pond, jump-shooting streams and water races, shifting to riverbeds where ducks have camped out for safety after the initial first-light flurry of shots. Then there's having field decoys and parrie silhouettes packed in the truck to target birds out in paddocks etc.
Not everyone can pivot to salvage a settled weather hunt. Those bound to balloted spots on public land or Fish & Game-administered waterbodies often have to be present in their maimais on Opening Weekend for a period of time.
The weather factor still holds true for the rest of the season though. There's no point staying put in your maimai on a mirror-like pond when the ducks are heading elsewhere. So be prepared to change your plans.
By May, farmers will be feeding-out and ducks will be looking at getting into the leftovers in un-stocked rotated paddocks. Layout blinds positioned on scouted paddocks and timed with farm staff intel on stock rotation, with perhaps some supplemented grain and a few repurposed decoys, could provide a few more birds to the bag when open water and dam hunting isn't working. Crop stubble and winter feeds like oats and late-harvest maize can pull ducks from miles around, giving shooting options that flat calm maimai ponds may not.
Birds will go and sit out on big rivers on Opening Weekend as well as further into the season – a Plan B could be targeting scouted river camps, where ducks have been seen rafting up or preening in the sun on a wide-open gravel bar. Sometimes minimal setups using a few decoys, a bit of natural river cover and good scouting intel can really produce great hunting.
If there's a common thread to these musings on situational anomalies, it is that waterfowling is generally planning-intensive, and success comes to those who put the time and effort in to get themselves in the right spot or situation. The right spot is dictated by scouting, weather conditions, landowner communication, and willingness to try new stuff or pivot on the spur of the moment when it is obvious that the original setup is not going to work.
As mentioned prior, each to their own. Opening Day is as much about the company as the shooting, and I appreciate some teams will be happy to ride out a quiet morning on a millpond hoping for better prospects on evening or the Sunday.
For others that want to give the shooting more of a nudge, building a well thought out alternative will add more arrows to the quiver and more dimensions to the day. Happy Opening!
Disclaimer:
The information presented in these news items is based on the context and regulations in place at the time of publication. Please note that some articles may include reference to laws and regulatory standards that have since changed. For the most current and accurate information please check our Fishing Licences & Regulations pages or our Hunting Licences & Regulations pages.