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TROUT FISHING WITH MAURICE RODWAY - Weekly Column: 15-October 1999
 Southland, New Zealand

Mataura River and Dry Flies

In most years the Mataura River is too full for fly fishing in October. Usually bait anglers, and maybe spin anglers have the river to themselves. Not this year. At present the upper reaches of the Mataura are low and trout are pretty hard to come by. In the reaches through the Nokomai gorge it is low but in good order for fly and spin fishing.

The waters are as clear as Mataura waters get, and trout shadows can be seen in the shallows. Not that trout in the Mataura are easy to see at the best of times. Unlike those of the Oreti which are relatively easy to "spot" the Mataura trout easily escape many prying eyes. Perhaps by a combination of their smaller size and the more opaque water of the Mataura. 

Trout in the Oreti are easy to spot but are easier to scare. Trout of the Mataura are more numerous and are harder to scare, but they can also be very difficult to catch.

It is the lower reaches of this river where the trout fishing is the best, and the most challenging. It is where there are trout too numerous to count, and where they can rise under your nose and ignore everything you drift past them. In fact Mataura trout are well known for this kind of disdain for angler's most carefully prepared and presented fly. An Oreti trout will take a fly most times you put it nearby, provided you don't frighten it first and that's not an easy proposition. The Salmo trutta of the Mataura are much more tolerant of large pairs of legs intruding into their back yard. But they are also much less likely to try your fly.  Skill is needed to catch trout anywhere, but on the Mataura you need more than skill.

Trout of the Mataura respond to mayfly hatches like trout anywhere do. They don't always respond to mayfly imitations in the way they should. Mataura mayflies are small, hook size 16, although in the spring they may be as big as a 14. They look brown or grey when floating downstream. They are delicate creatures that get buffeted by the wind. They move about a little on the water surface. Like a ballerina en Pointe.

To get a small hook dressed in wisps of feather and fur to look and act just like one of these river dancers; to mimic the shimmer of their tutu and the arch of their body, has not quite been achieved. Mataura trout can be fooled by your facsimile of daintiness, but not consistently, and not often. Not by me much at all.

To anglers who can regularly catch Mataura trout on dry flies I bow to you, and long to share your stage one day; where the pinnacle of trout fishing lies.

Maurice Rodway
Southland, New Zealand                           E-mail: information@southlandfishgame.co.nz

Article © 1999 Maurice Rodway, All Rights Reserved.

01-Oct-99

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