• Stream revisited

    The other day, I put up a post about some nice fat trout on this forum. I went to the same stretch a week later and caught only 3 amago then. Two weeks later, I went again, and caught no trout but a small dace like fish. Last week, I decided to go further upstream of the river.



    To go to the headwater of the river, you have to walk along a trail, which parallels the stream all the way up to the top of a mountain. The trailhead lies on the upper end of the backwater of a reservoir. For the first 500 meters from the start, the trail is made by cutting a rock face that you can see in the right side of the stream in this picture (looking upstream). There is a waterfall at a few hundred upstream of this picture and you cannot go over the fall through the stream.
    As I wrote before, this river was heavily damaged by a strong typhoon in 2004, and the trail was also washed away in many places. It had been closed since then, but in October last year, after the trout season ended, the first 3 or 4 km from the trail head was reopened. This is enough for me, because further up, the stream is filled with huge rocks and fishing is difficult and dangerous. Anyway, I hadn’t been there for more than 10 years, and the place was virtually new to me. There were two other cars at the trailhead, but fortunately, they seem to belong to workers at the power plant, not to fishermen.

    After clearing the waterfall, I found no water on the riverbed, which was filled with sand and stones. I had to walk further along the trail for a while until water appeared. We have had little rain this season. Besides, there is another dam upstream where the water is taken for a hydroelectric power plant.



    At the first nice looking pool (shown in this picture), I came down to the stream and started fishing. In the riffle at the head of this pool, the first amago of the day took my fly. It seemed it was going to be a good day.



    Look at the surprised look. This amago didn’t seem to understand what had happened to him.
    "Don’t worry; you’re safe. Grow big and see you again."



    Amago took my fly in every good looking water. There were no foot prints around. Perhaps, few people have fished this water in this season (hence, since 2004).



    Two nice fish responded in this riffle and I brought one of them to my hand.



    What a lovely day! The sun is up and bright. The mountains are covered with new green. Fish are plentiful. And the whole stream is mine!

    I fished very slowly, taking time for each plunge pool and for each good riffle. There was no reason to hurry.



    This pool also yielded a nice amago as expected.



    The body color of some amago in this stream is dark brown like this one. Such fish may be truly native to this stream.



    Amago kept rising to my dry fly, but as the sun hid behind a tall mountain, fish stopped responding to my fly.
    I ended the fishing, being fully contented.
    This article was originally published in forum thread: Stream revisited started by Satoshi View original post
    Comments 2 Comments
    1. adam's Avatar
      adam -
      Love it.

      So happy to read your perspective.
    1. willowgrub's Avatar
      willowgrub -
      What a beautiful place . The scenery is so similar to the back country of the South Island New Zealand . many of our rivers have that unstable look , and do not produce many fish as a result . Those amago must be tough little fish .