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TROUT FISHING WITH MAURICE RODWAY - Weekly Column: 13 March 1998
 Southland, New Zealand

TREASURES OF MARCH

When lacebark trees become sprinkled with starry blooms and fog shrouds the mornings we can be reassured that autumn is just a step or two away. Copper tussocks, banners which advertise the presence of trout streams  gather outsized droplets of water from the fog and as you walk amongst them towards rivulets where trout lie they chill your legs. Summer mornings carry no such promise of a calm warm day ahead.

Summer mornings have departed with the month of February. Darkness lingers instead. Fog and dew are captured in the tillers of the tussock then withdrawn to moisten the soil. The sun rises bright and warm still, but a little farther north.  You need a jersey for a start but later perspiration confirms that mid morning temperatures are warm enough to fetch cicadas onto sunward branches and tempt mayflies from their homes amongst the river stones.

In the midsummer cicadas and green beetles vied for a river current to bask in, ignorant of the danger that waited below. March afternoons still carry the strumming of a romantic cicada but they are less apt to tempt fate in uncertain currents.  Little mayflies with wispy wings continue to strut their tiny stuff on mirror like waters and widening circlets of water mark the point of their departure from the world. In the stillness of the afternoon the little trout created waves travel from one side of the stream to the other. In the Mataura, where trout wait in queues  for assertive mayflies that have had insufficient education in predator - prey relationships the waves meet and provide the only flaw in the glazing brought about by still air and quiet water flows.

A visit to small streams in the hills in March contains the treasures on a Southland autumn.  The arch of a tussock, an autumn flower, the crackle of a cicada, a quiet current flow. Perhaps the best of all a small circlet of waves in a pool flecked with a little foam. Casting a fly towards these pulses of hope requires patience and skill. You must wait until the ripples from a real meal cause enough distortion on the water’s surface to mask your cast. You have to use a long, light leader and your first cast has to be just right.   Then you will see a dark nose slowly appear and disappear with your forgery.

At this time of the year trout you bring to the shore will be heavy with milt or eggs. You think carefully about taking it home for dinner. These experiences are of a rare kind. You want to be sure they can happen again.    

Maurice Rodway
Southland, New Zealand                           E-mail: fishgame@southnet.co.nz

Article ©1998 Maurice Rodway, All Rights Reserved.

27 Feb 98
13 Feb 98   |   07 Feb 98   |   30 Jan 98
23 Jan 98   |    16 Jan 98   |   02 Jan 97
26 Dec 97   |    12 Dec 97   |   05 Dec 97
28 Nov 97   |    21 Nov 97   |    14 Nov 97

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