I’ve had the good fortune — or the extreme displeasure, depending on either your perspective or your fondness for self-immolation — to spend many days and evenings fishing some of America’s most difficult trout water. Fabled rivers like the Henry’s Fork, Missouri, and Delaware, where mayfly hatches can be dizzyingly complex and the fish are so conditioned from almost non-stop interactions with humans that tricking them with one of your fur-and-feather imitations requires delicacy, skill, and a tremendous amount of both practice and patience. These are “PhD” trout, folks like to say, and despite my lack of fondness for the description, its intended conveyance hits the mark. Without question, trout that swim in those rivers are, in a wholly relative sense, smart.
But, to borrow from William Goldman’s cocky Sicilian, the fish of these venerated waters — the Platos, Aristotles, and Socrates of the trout world? Morons. At least, that is, when compared to the true philosopher kings of the salmonid universe: New Zealand trout. Never go in against a Kiwi brown or rainbow when your fishing trip is on the line, it would seem. Or so I’d been told.
In fact, I’d been so regaled with tales of the enormity of the intellect of the average New Zealand trout that I had, for a long time, bumped a visit to the island nation way down my bucket list. After all the defeated footslogs I’d logged walking along the banks of iconic rivers right here at home, I didn’t feel the need to travel to the other side of the globe to be reminded of my shortcomings as a fly fisher. Sixteen-foot gossamar leaders, miniscule drab flies, impossible reach casts, and trout that flee for cover at the slightest disturbance may be some anglers’ idea of a good time, but to me it sounded, as my friend Tom Davis would say, “about as much fun as pushing a car uphill with a rope.”
And then I went. Expecting to spend five days exploring the South Island’s backcountry rivers while being treated to a steady diet of frustration punctuated, ever so infrequently, by occasional victories when chance more than talent afforded me a celebration or two. So what of the lore of the outsized genius of New Zealand’s trout? As it turns out, it’s all bollocks. Pure and utter rubbish.
Perhaps it wouldn’t be accurate to say that my New Zealand experience was the exact opposite of all the Kiwi trout tales I’d read. But it was nearly so. Day after day, we dropped down over the Southern Alps into one watershed or another, waved goodbye to the pilot as the twin-engine Cedar Lodge AStar helicopter — or as they refer to them in New Zealand, “squirrels” — that had delivered us spun up its rotors and shuffled off, and proceeded to walk the banks a blindingly turquoise river, spotting and stalking the island nation’s famous brown and rainbow trout all along the way.
Instead of fish with advanced degrees, we found trout eager not only to eat our flies, but keen to move several feet to chase them when our casts missed their mark — which they did more often than I’d like to admit. Insensitive to fly size, pattern, leader length, and even presentations that went splat on the surface, the fish we encountered weren’t just consistently cooperative, it’s fair to say they were greedy. In fact, about the only thing that would blow a shot at the stout fish that punctuated the rivers was a clumsy approach. Put another way, letting the fish see you before you saw them. The discerning, erudite trout I’d read about all my angling life? Well, those fish were nowhere to be found.
Upon returning, I scoured the internet for anglers that shared my experience. Fly fishers that, like me, had ventured to Land of the Long White Cloud, expectations in check, keen just to see it, if nothing else. Nope. Just more tales of doctorate level fish that fled with a tale wave at the slightest imperfection in angling technique. Referring to New Zealand’s browns and rainbows, a New York Times article informed its readers that “many fly fishermen consider them the most difficult to catch of all trout.” “One does not go to New Zealand expecting to land lots of fish,” another read. Terms like “fussy,” “lockjaw,” and “highly selective” predominated others.
And then I stumbled on it. An old article published in the now defunct Fly Rod & Reel magazine, the author’s name omitted on the web site that had reprinted it. “Trout in NZ are reputedly difficult to catch. This is complete nonsense,” it read. “They are both crass and unsophisticated.”
Finally, I’d found another angler that had fished the New Zealand I trotted across the globe to fish, not the possibly mythical one I’d been reading about for decades. Crass and unsophisticated, I thought. I couldn’t, and haven’t, put it better myself.
Immediately following the author’s rebuke of claims of New Zealand trout with monstrous intellects, instead reporting them to be the same zealous, uncritical fish I’d encountered, was a qualifier: Especially so in the backcountry.
And even though the author had taken care to apply his characterization of Kiwi trout to all of New Zealand’s trout, I wondered if therein lied the rub. After all, I’d not spent any time plying the waters of South Island’s most famous, road-serviced rivers whose inhabitants unquestionably see an order of magnitude — if not several — more flies and anglers than their backcountry counterparts.
In planning my eventual return to New Zealand, I’ve decided it doesn’t matter. The next time I travel 30-plus hours to chase trout in the far corner of the world, I’ll be returning to the backcountry. To the seldom fished waters that course through the Makorora and other nearby valleys. If I don’t have a helicopter to carry me there, I’ll have my feet and the the benefit of the nearly 1,000 publicly accessible backcountry huts that dot the nation’s north and south islands. Crass and unsophisticated. Those are the trout I’m looking for.
The highly intelligent Kiwi trout that’ll turn up their noses at the slightest imperfection? I don’t think they exist.
IF YOU GO
Choosing a Lodge
For helicopter fly out fishing on the South Island, no New Zealand lodge compares to the storied operation run out of Cedar Lodge in the Makorora Valley. With first rate hospitality, stunning food and wines, and daily helicopter flights to remote, backcountry trout rivers and streams included in the offering, no outfitter provides more access to lightly pressured New Zealand brown and rainbow trout.
If helicopter-serviced fishing doesn’t sound like your idea of an approachable fishing trip, then the aforementioned backcountry hut system managed by the New Zealand Department of Conservation offers a way for anglers that don’t mind long, sometimes multi-day hikes to reach some (but not all) of the South Islands most infrequently fished river, streams, and creeks.
Getting There
Anglers traveling to New Zealand’s Makarora Valley traditionally arrive at the international airport in Auckland on the North Island, catching a subsequent connecting flight to Queenstown on the South Island, then renting a car or hiring a shuttle service to complete their journey.
When to Go
Trout season on New Zealand’s South Island, with few exceptions, begins on October 1 and ends on April 30.
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