I’ve been in a little funk lately. I’ve spent the holidays away from home, earthquakes have shaken things up, the fishing has sucked, the weather is all over the place, and my work schedule has been retarded for a couple of weeks now. I hadn’t been on the water for at least a week. It’s been raining all over the place, and most all of the rivers are up and dirty. There are a couple that have much smaller catchments and there was a fair chance they’d be clear. I was determined to get out, even though the forecast called for mostly cloudy and a chance of rain.
I left for work at 5am, after being there for 13 hours, and headed south. As the dawn emerged I could see that there were actually very few high clouds over most of Canterbury, yet there was a heavy low layer to the south, where I was heading. After an hour of driving I found myself squarely underneath that thick cloud layer, but drove the rest of the way to the river, which was new water to me. When I arrived I saw that it’s not what I came for, the water was clear but there would be no spotting fish with those clouds.
Determined to get out of my funk, and feeling good about the day, I decided to execute plan B. Problem was, I didn’t have a plan B, so I made one, breaking out the map and looking for some water that would have clear skies. An hour and a half west, there was a river I’d heard mentioned, but all the talk was of the lower regions by the sea where Kiwi’s chase salmon with gear. I was going to head much farther upstream.
Back in the car, and hauling to get there.
This is not the river I was going to fish, but a much larger one that was along the way.
Some early morning dead stuff
I make it to the river, and begin looking for access points, essentially driving up to homesteads and knocki
