Despite the trout strike...

Was bantering with my old mate Brian (BJ) the other day about why he never takes me game fishing. (well, not really never, 3 times in 10 years is more than never). He fired back “where’s my invite?” when I told him I would be looking to head out and chase some channel marker kingis one evening. Fair question too. So a trip was arranged. I’d been down country on business and on my return got my gear sorted; truck and boat loaded and set off for Torpedo Bay. Sunny day, 20kt NE dropping to ~10kt… I was hoping like hell for the predicted wind drop as casting in 20kt should be reserved for people going fishing in Tierra del Fuego. Boat in, and a quick nip out of the harbour to check conditions (choppy!) before going to pick up BJ. Once he was aboard we decided to go to a more distant marker, as the island in front of it would offer good shelter from the NE.

A quick lesson on getting the drag set correctly, not using a trout strike and BJ was set. He struggled a bit with the shooting head but got a cast away ok. A couple of fast strips and despite the trout strike, wham he was on. The fish had inhaled the fly so even the rod raise he employed set the hook ok. The rod tore down – fish on! The fish gave a good account of itself and stayed deep and it was a good scrap to the boat where I netted it. High 5’s! Always good to get the first one under your belt.

Grunt, grimace

My turn to step up to the plate. I got in a few good shots and let the fly settle deep but not even a nip. Then I snagged up on the structure and lost the fly. BJ suggested changing fly pattern so I removed the faithful Mushy and replaced it with a slim piper fly. First shot and BOOM it was hit. The fish went off like a demented thing but we steered it away from the marker chain and got on top of it. After a pretty much straight up and down battle BJ slid the net under the fish and it was boated. We played around for quite a while catching and losing fish (the marker chain claimed 4 or 5) including one that hit like a missile giving BJ a line burn before turning and running crazily and unstoppably to the chain. Game over.

Water on lens, always a good idea ... not

A couple of hours of fun at the one marker is good sport; but the fish do tend to switch off so BJ rigged his popper rod to see if he could aggro any of the residents into biting. Nothing doing there, so off to the next venue. Rangi Channel was like a washing machine, wind, tide and traffic causing slop and chop and to be honest it didn’t look all that accommodating. We got soaked by spray on the way in. None the less we moved into the channel markers and BJ launched the popper. Nothing. Off to the next marker where I hit it up with the fly. Nothing. Next marker and things started going wrong…. First up I hit the marker with the fly somehow, and the line whipped completely around the marker and took a grip on the barnacles. The fly itself was wrapped up in the structure of the buoy. I knew that this was fatal… the Teeny T-350 was about to be destroyed. And it was…. Snapping below the shooting head. I guess now I have a pretty good running line to attach some T-14 to… having said that, at approx. $65USD these lines are pretty affordable compared to some and I would have caught well over 100 kingis on it before destroying it. I had another arrow in the quiver and pulled out my all-time favourite 10 weight, my Scott S4s 8810/4. Well sort of pulled, sort of pushed sort of carelessly and heard the dreaded CLICK of the tip snapping – in the space of 5 minutes I’d destroyed a fly line AND broken the tip of the finest 10 weight I’d ever held. Almost zero chance of getting a replacement tip section I reckon (have hit up Manic, the local distributor, here’s hoping) but as BJ pointed out, the break was directly where the tip top joins so putting a new tip on is feasible and would give me a quite unique 8’7” rod. I used the tip-ring-less rod and it actually cast quite well, in the process I nailed another fish which finished the session nicely. We cruised back in on a following sea, agreed to do it again sometime and I dropped BJ off.

I don’t and will not subscribe to not using a rod because it’s precious or holds fond memories – so I suppose it’s reasonable to break one every now and then. That’s now 3 Sages, a Kilwell, and 2 Scott’s I’ve broken in 35 odd years of fly fishing. Not that bad really.