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Creasy's Column Jan 2012
As good as it gets…
The night sky holds its mystery, I prefer it that way. In the deep south, when the sun sets and the twilight turns to purple haze and darkness fills the valleys, the first stars are seen, clear, unblinking in the dust-free air. Then skeins of stars drift across the darkness, and the darkness comes alive with planets, with asteroids, gases and nebulae, with galaxies and billions upon billions of heavenly bodies that if the Big Bang Theory is correct are travelling away from the centre of the universe.
Does that mean the ones travelling away from us are seen at their youngest, while those travelling towards us are seen in their dotage, perhaps already dead of old age, but their light is young and strong. Perhaps there is some Newtonian gravitational fold in space that brings time and galaxies closer?
In the light of the morning we ride old water, glacier melt from the Tasman Glacier, with a little help from the Godley. The flour, ice-ground from ancient rock, hangs suspended in the water, colouring Lakes Tekapo, Pukaki and Benmore, a quick flow through Aviemore and this old liquid keeps us afloat on the Waitaki River.
Image: The fast water tires the rainbow and it is soon brought to the net. (Credit Hamish Carnachan)
It’s a rich liquid, and the bugs that live in it are plentiful and the fish that live on the bugs grow fat. So do the bands of snot rock, didymo, the curse of the river system. There is a time, though, when the river flows high but not too high, when there is visibility through the top few centimetres. It’s rarely clear enough to spot fish lying deep, but if they’re on the feed, they can be caught. The feed lines stream through pools and runs in telltale bands of bubbles and the fish appear and disappear in time with the mayflies’ rise.
We run downstream, speeding from riffle to run, turning into backwaters, searching for a rise. The river drums on the aluminium hull, and there’s an occasional rattle as the bottom strikes gravel, before sweeping into the pools, kicking up spray. The river’s wide enough for manoeuvre without unduly disturbing the fish, and in one sidestream, where a pool is formed in the lee of a massive log, a trout is rising. Tony Tweed turns the boat into a steep gravel bank with enough force to ground it high and we jump out to stalk the fish. It’s the first fish of the day and I creep up on it, pulling line off the reel and false casting as the fish comes into view. The fly is a small nymph with big eyes that I had caught a fish with the day before.
I cast and the fly drops a metre ahead and a metre to the side of the fish and drifts the perfect drift that should have provoked a strike, but the rainbow sips flies from the surface and ignores the nymph.
Another cast in the milky line of foam and again the trout refuses.
It takes a couple more casts and a rush of enlightenment for me to realise the fish can’t see the fly. Visibility is a lot less than it seems, and it takes sunlight and blue sky for the trout to observe the mayflies as they hatch. My passing morsel is invisible, and for it to be visible I would have to cast it directly over the fish with the chance that leader would stand out like a hawser, and perhaps brush the fish and put it down. A dry fly would be a lot more visible.
The hatching mayflies were small and dark, probably Deleatidium vernale, and their nearest imitation in my fly box was tied with a black hackle and stripped peacock herl body. Size would probably matter most, and the smallest I had was #16. The cast is made and the fly taken, but not by the rising rainbow. Instead a tiny 10cm rainbow leaps from the water with my fly in its lip, and almost lands on the feeding rainbow. By the time I released it, the big fish was gone. Back to the boat with its Subaru snarl – no need for a big V8, this boat is lightweight and minimal – kicking up white water as we dodge patches of didymo on the riffles, hard acceleration on the downstream shallows, Tweedie always searching for the best route, while I am struck speechless by the display of skill and bravado, though I’m supposed to be keeping an eye out for rising fish.
Eventually we’ve gone far enough, and it’s time to head upstream. We speed up the riffles and slow down at the tails of the pools. With a current to contend with the boat is much more manoeuvrable and Tweedie is able to hover on the water while we search for rising fish. There are no signs, not even a hatch to attract something to the surface. For pool after pool we repeat the process, speeding up the riffles, holding to the point of stalling on pressure waves and in still water, then speeding through to the next pool.
We discuss the merits of running a big Z-spinner through the pools to see if we can provoke some action. It begins to look like a feasible proposition, until we at last come to a pool where, at its head some 20 metres away, fish are rising. There are pressure waves and back currents to contend with, but a line of bubbles at the base of a steep drop-off show where the fish are, and where the insects are coming to the surface. In the milk-white water the dark snouts of rainbows suck mayflies from the surface. There is heavy water above them, blowing out in pressure waves as it boils over the rapids and into their pool. They feed on, deaf to the wild currents and the snarl of the Subaru motor 20 metres downstream from them.
Tweedie hovers the jetboat halfway up the pool, on the downstream face of a pressure wave, steady as she goes, bobbing gently enough for me to stand and cast. It takes a cast or two to get it right and a rainbow takes the tiny black dry. Tweedie lets the boat drift off the wave, keeping the fish upstream, but its weight and strength are too much to hold, and it whips past us, powering into the run below the pool. We follow it, motor roaring, then quiet and roaring again as Tweedie tries to get traction in the downstream flow. He swings the boat around and the fish is above us, my rod bent over as the rainbow breaks the surface. The fast water tires it and it is brought to the net, unhooked and killed.
A minute or two to shake the fly dry and it’s back to the feeding fish. The pattern is repeated but on the fourth approach Tweedie puts a heavy foot on the throttle and the boat bounds forward, into the middle of the rise. The fish are gone, though the mayflies keep rising in the sunshine.
The day is done. I am sated, both with the fish caught and the sheer excitement at the display of skill that enabled me to catch them. Elation is too moderate a word and we celebrate success till darkness falls and the wine flow slows and the barbecue shows only cinders.
The midnight sky is alight with heavenly bodies, spilling through space in gargantuan vibration, a billion galaxies aglow at birth and by now (if there is a now) spawning suns and planets as yet unseen, but in all the universe could there be a time and place as good as this?
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