Oraka

Well its been a long time in between fishing trips and as it was my birthday I thought I would get away from it all and go fishing. since I am already awake with the kids at 6am I left as soon as I was up or near enough.

After a few missed turns and a tiki tour through Hamilton (it has been too long) i arrived at one of my favourite stretches of water only to find that it was a lot more overgrown than last time and the electric fence was on so a lot of scrambling under fences and getting scratched by grass and blackberry. However it would be all worth it if i was slaying the fish but after the first hour i had only seen the one back at the bridge i left. the first fish i found i spooked but it was big probably close to 4lb. i tried a few flies but i think it was on high alert so i moved on and saw nothing all the way back to where i started where i tried the pool there and missed a good fish only to have it take again on the second pass. Unfortunately this fish was like a wet noodle and there were no blistering runs but it was a decent size at around 50cm so possibly getting to 4lb. i got one more smaller fish just before the bridge which gave more of a fight than the bigger one before i packed it in.

I only had a couple of hours left till i needed to head home and dare i say it the Waihou was looking like my only option but when i got to the car park it was full so decided to go to the Waimakariri instead which turned out to be the better option. no people and more fish. i managed to get 5 in the first hole and 11 by the time I left home. Although they were smaller fish it was good fun and better than nothing.

After arriving back in Auckland I realised how much better the weather had been down in the Waikato. It certainly felt like a summers day and i was certainly feeling the stress lift from my shoulders.