Any Trout fishing experts?

There are great plans afoot tomorrow. Three of us are going to have a crack at trout fishing.... hopefully, without the crack! Last time I had a go, I lost the hook on the first flick. There was a loud crack behind me and it was gone to who knows where. It's just a matter of practise. On that particular effort, Dad had tied all the doings on. This time I'm on my own. None of us has fly fished before but it's not so much the tecnique we are having problems with, it's this leader and the other thinner bit (can't remember what that bit of line is called) and the joining of said bits of line together. I can do a 'blood knot' it's more where it is tied. There is a premade loop on the actual line where the leader line is tied on but when we tied the leader through this little loop, the nylon cut through the 'olive floating line'. So is the leader line tied around this little loop? How long is the leader and the other thinner bit supposed to be? One web site said several metres but with a long length, less than the metreage suggested, I got into an awful tangle. (We were practising in the driveway! I caught a dwarf tree behind me, the fence behind me, the fence in front of me, a tuft of grass and nearly a chicken. We weren't using a hook, just a little fluffy pompom thing that came with the flies. In the end I had a birds nest in the leader that I couldn't get unknotted. Tomorrow we are going into a hunting shop and seeing if we can pry some information out of the staff. The two rods were bought on-line and came in a kit. One rod, one reel, one leader and the thin bit reel, a small box of flies and a bag for the rod. My friend bought two kits so the three of us would be able to take turns. We're also getting a licence each tomorrow. I hope they're still obtainable for the day. There are other bits of paper we have to fill out when we've finished, they want to know how many we caught. I hope one of us at least will get the opportunity to fill this bit out. I've only ever fished in salt water off a boat and off the beach. The boat side of things is a well worn path and I've caught heaps but surf casting... I caught my toe on a rock. I also caught a small rock with seaweed on it and some sort of pink crustacean.

So, I'm running blind as far as the whole trout thing goes.
Anyone out there know how long leaders are and where they attach? And that other thinner line?

Yakut

No idea lurv!

Where there any baby birds in that nest? bet they thought they were on some sort of fair ground ride and the parents where probably thinking the little buggers would sit still long enough for them to put the food in their gobs!

You could always just wade into the water and 'tickle' the fishes!

That reminds me of the Tickle-me Elmo joke!!

the other thinner line is often called the tippet
but seriously, why would you what to catch a trout? they taste worse than my old socks, they are filled with bones and you are unlikely to catch one big enough to make it worth eating anyway. and you have to pay for the privelige of it! go to the sea and catch some real fish - sounds like you are good at that
you will be eaten alive by sandflies, twist your ankle on the boulders, catch your gear in the gorse, fall in the mud, slip on the rock snot, be yelled at by the farmers, and have to walk for miles and miles!
give me a boat any day! or a beach chair, rod spike and a can of beer. then you get to build sand castles with the kids at the same time! or have a snooze
although - it is fun tickling them as mm suggests (not that id know...) you need to find a steep bank or tree overhang and sneak up on them quietly, bringing in your hand up to them from underneath and carefully sliding your hand under their tummies. if they shoot off, you can some times lower your hand down a bit and wait for a while (quarter of an hour or more usually i mean in theory...) until they come back. they are seldom as skittish the second time ( according to some sources...)- but the water can get cold after that long and that will affect your grip (so ive heard...)... once your hand is a bit forward of the middle of the center of gravity of the fish, in one very swift and usually wet motion (some one once told me...) grab as hard as you can and try and biff them up onto the bank. good luck - it is very hard to do (apparently...) bear in mind that the lateral line on a fish is hard wired into their muscles, so if they detect movement (change in water pressure) they dart off before the signal reaches even their brain - that is a reaction time that you can never hope to match, you have to anticipate and allow for it. the real big ones you can (if you can see them to time it right) shove your fingers in their gills and grab them like that, but their gill rakers are very sharp and can cut your fingers quite badly (not that id know...) its amazing what a kid will pick up when growing up around streams...

LOL! Sounds like fun MC!!! Especially the can of beer bit

Never tried tickling a trout before have to admit but I reckon that BD could tell ya he has tickled an old trout!

and did it land him in deep water? did you need a beer after? i hope you two didnt catch anything!

Hahaha! Dunno about deep water, but he's certainly landed himself in hot water many a time! It's hard work keeping this old trout tickled!!

I didn't catch a thing. Had fun though, until we were packing up to leave. I grabbed my coat which I'd left on the side of the dam and got stung in the little finger by a bee... well I think it was a bee, I didn't see it. Whatever it was left a sort of scottish thistle like thorn in me. Gor blimey it hurts something chronic, still! I mean it's pretty much agony and every second or two it feels like I'm being stung again. I didn't think as soon as I got stung, I just whipped my hand away and glimpsed at my finger, saw something and rubbed it off on my trousers so no doubt I squeezed a bit of poison into it. Gods know how I'm going to get to sleep tonight with it.
Cutting my finger off has been a flitting thought. It can't possibly hurt any more surely! I had to come home and feed all the goats and Dodie, fortunately they must have sensed the pain I'm in and behaved very well. Even Hanukkah got stuck into her bottle without messing about too much. The chooks needed to be sorted, the ex battery hens still have a problem roosting for the night. Four were on the ground and when I put one up, she knocked someone else off. It was also the job that needed me to use both hands.

I just hope that when I wake up, the pain will be gone, or at least diminished. It's been 30 years since I got stung. I'm assuming it was a bee.... I was very gratefull that we don't have any real nasties in this country. We had to walk back a way to the car and stop on the way to fill out a form saying how many fish we'd caught. Nil! I didn't think me being caught by a bee counted.

Finding a place that could give us a fishing licence was a right royal pain! We went to one shop in Pukekohe, a fishing shop, they sent us to a sports store, they didn't, and sent us to Farmlands who will be but not until May, they sent us to another hunting and fishing shop. The bloke there said there was no money in it for them (mainly guns in there). He sent us to the post office in a book shop that has since changed its name. Nope, they said it was all done on line. I couldn't believe that and as a last resort, stoppe din at The Rusty Dog. Finally!!! Yes!!!! Not only that but I bought 4 flies for $10.... so that other bloke was wrong about not making any money out of issuing fishing licences. Provide one service and it gets people into your shop, there's a good chance, if you've got the stock, they'll buy something else. The hunting and fishing shop had about 6 selections of flies, if that, the rods were all sea rods.

The last shop had three or four drawers of flies all named.

Is it me or are shops becoming more and more limited in their stock and their local knowledge. A lot of places seem to be reluctant to help if they can't seel you something.

MC, you're right about the rocks. The only place to fish at Mangatawhiri dam is off the rock face. When you get your line out so far, the hook hits the rock behind you (it slopes down to the water edge) and it either gets all defluffed or you loose it. I couldn't get the line out very far because of the rock face and my lack of knowledge on casting. I seem to get a good length of line out but it would all plop into the water in a coil and not that far from the bank. I was also mindfull of the helpfull hints the chap in the shop gave us. Wear a beanie to protect the back of your head, neck and ears from the hook. I took my hat with me but left it in the car, which Kim drove back down to where the gate was. The sign said the gate was shut at 4pm. She wanted to sit and read her book.

So, I get stung, hopped about swearing a blue streak and hissing with pain. My friend had an ice pack for the sandwich she'd brought along and also some antihistamine and water, so after downing a pill and trying to rest my finger on the icepack, we gathered our stuff and headed for the car. Luckily we'd walked back along the dam and were closer to the carpark than we had been, then it was a downhill walk on the gravel road back to the car. Kim drove home with me sitting there hissing, ooofing, ahhhing and gawding beside her which got louder when I tried to roll meself a fag. Kim said a nurse had told her about pain tranferrence and suggested I pinch my upper arm hard.... I did..... I didn't work and I was only to pleased to share this fact with her.
Our friend had brought some snickers bars with her and handed them out which shut me up for a few seconds ( they were only mini ones). I'm about to go give Hanukkah her grain and then I shall down a Zopli... something, (like imovane) and see if I can't knock myself sideways with it, anything to stop this ruddy pain.

I'm going to try again though, fishing I mean, not getting stung.

This time we may head out to one of the lakes near Waiuku somewhere.

Yakut

welcome to trout fishing.
if your really want to catch the beasties, there are a number of methods that are far easier. a mate taught me to fish for trout around otorahanga (honokiwi). we used a little hook with three or four worms sometimes weighted down with little lead peas. the hooks and split shot would cost maybe $10 and would be enough to last you for years and years. you could use a trout rod if you had to, but any light tackle rod/reel is fine. simply flick the worm mass at the top end of a pool and let it swirl around as you let line out. if you see the line change its path or twitch at all then give a little strike on the line. if your hook is sharp enought, you only need to get the very tip of the hook just touching the fishes mouth and the resistance of the fish taking off will do the rest, although another little strike will either set the hook properly there and then or get them off quickly without freaking them too much and you may get another bash at them. this works best in smaller rivers and streams when the water is anywhere from slightly milky to choclate brown (if fishing a confluence with a clearer tributary coming in) and is devastatingly productive
for bigger, clearer rivers use lures on a spinning outfit. those rubber ones that look like smelt, bullies or baby trout work really well here in the wairarapa. just biff it out and retrieve it, biff it out and retrieve it, biff it out and retrieve it and hang on when it doesnt want to come back! this method suits dams and lakes really well.
of course as these methods are so effective, you are not often allowed to use them. your liscense will tell you which areas are allowed to be fished this way. it also tells you how many fish are there! they seem to only allow this method where the fish are prolific. a section of water can only support so much boimass of fish. so if we pretend that 100m of stream can support 5kg of fish weight, then that could be 5 fish at 1kg each, or 2 fish at 2.5kg. overstocked streams will stunt the growth of the fish, so thinning them out will allow the remainder to grow bigger. smaller ones are also dumber and easier to catch - and of course there are more of them. call me lazy, but i like to play the odds
another method which works well and you can use anywhere is called 'dappling' (i think). its where you spot a fish lying near a stream bank and sneak up on him from the land side, hiding so he wont see you, carefully and slowly extend the rod tip out above him and lower the fly down until it is sitting on top of the water a foot or so in front of him. then just gently lift the fly up and down as if it were fliting about and landing. the beauty of this one is you are not thrashing the water with your line, which puts many fish off. ive caught fish this way when ive been up a tree that is hanging over a bank a good 10m above the water, which is great in theory until you hook the fish and realise that now you have to somehow land the bugger!
my mate emailed me this morning saying the forecast for tomorrow is 20knots easing in cook straight and am i up for a fish. i really need to make some toys in the shed to pay for finishing off my house, but now i am beginnig to get sorely tempted.... we got 8kg of meat from 22 blue cod two weeks ago and have eaten most of them already!

We were fishing in water that was intended for human consumption, which is a bit of a worry. I can just imagine some unscroupulous deviots peeing on the rocks on the dam face, seeing as the one toilet could be up to a couple of hundred metres away and they would have to walk.

Because the water needs to be kept clean, there was no bait fishing allowed, fair enough but to limit a body to the rock face is a bit cruel. As soon as you have a long length of line whistling around, it hits the bank behind you and either ruins the fly by bashing it on the rocks or it gets stuck and as you fling everything forward again, gets stuck and you're left with a bit of line blowing in the breeze.
We were lucky enough to have a breeze blowing from behind us, if we'd had to fight the wind, I'm sure one of us would have ended up with a pierced nose or eyelid.

I've been to the library and checked out a DVD on fresh water fishing. It's by the TV bloke Geoff Thomas, which is fine but I get peeved when they introduce the viewers to helifishing and zooming off in the latest Hamilton jet to some over populated with fish, secluded spot only known to the fishing guide. The whole thing gets a bit 'blokey'. I want to, or rather need to know from scratch. Not somewhere in the intermediate levels of trout fishing knowledge.
Realistically, how many of us out there who have an interest in fishing can afford to rent a helicopter to some remote spot or hire a deep sea fishing launch to take them way out the back of beyond.
Mind you, I don't see how being strapped to the back of a boat with some huge spiked fish is leaping about on the end of your line. I only need enough fish for a meal. I don't like frozen fish much at all and cooking it right there on the spot is the best way to eat it.
I'd be happy with a bag limit of one or two.

Blue cod! Mmmmmmmmmmm yum! My family (with the exception of my sister who got seasick just thinking about the boat) went fishing ever Easter in the Marlborough Sounds. We rented a bach in Penzance with friends and three or four boats would pound their way out to Allen Strait or the Chetwoods for the day, every day.
One Easter though, it rained the whole time and us kids ended up playing Monopoly every day all day. I'm glad my sister wasn't there for that, her bum squeaks when she walks, she would have managed hotels on everything and bleeding everyone dry for rent.

I love the Sounds. Just sitting in the boat with the sound of the water ploping and sloshing on the sides of the boat and the odd squeal from Dad when Mum reeled a fish in and hit him in the face with it, asking him to take it off and rebait her hook. Dad would reply with a "Jeeze Denny can ya keep it out of my face?"
I think the worst ones were when she'd hit him in the back of the neck with the fish and it would sort of slide around over his ear to his face. Mum would be insisting it wasn't her, it was the movement of the boat. Yeah right!
He did know it was coming though. There would be a lot of "oooh, oooh Grant, oooh, it's a biggie, OOof, it's putting up a fight Grant, I might need help'. This was followed with either an "Awwww, it's gone" or a "Awwww it's just a tiddler..... but it felt heavy and it put up a hell of a fight" or "Oooh it's a nice one, get the net Grant, quick before it gets away". The other laugh was when one of us caught what we knew as a 'Maori Chief' sorry for being un-pc. They are sort of cod shaped but are brown and black splotched with a really big head and jaw. When you haul them up, they open their mouths really wide and fill with water so you think you've got something close to rivaling Maui. At the surface it turns out to be about 8 inches long and as mean as cat pooh about being caught.
I think their spines are a bit dubious too, I remember avoiding getting poked by these at all costs.

I'd love a boat but they are way too expensive. I've even picked out a name. Eh eh, promise not to tell? Nautilass... get it? Naughty Lass? In my childhood, I couldn't for the life of me see why our boats name was so 'cute' Miss Conduct. To me it was two words and I thought conduct was something to do with electricity and tape....

I was itching to get out there on that dam yesterday. I could see some real potential spots.... well they looked good to me, probably not a trouts potential palace but then, I was always nagging Dad to take me 'over there' because it looked better than where we were. Truth be told, 'over there' would have got me in the weeds and rocks and I would have got snagged and Dad would have spent a fortune in tackle. Honestly, for some reason, 10 metres in any direction seemed more a likely place to catch fish than where we were.

Mum made him go and investigate a huge splash in the water once, out at the end of Adele Island near Kaiteriteri. All I saw was an absolutely massive shadow going under the boat, the a tail, or fluke that was as big as the bow or bigger, come up out of the water and splash down again. Mum was pushing us into the cabin and telling Dad to get the boat out of there. He was a bit reluctant to take off too fast in case he startled the whatever it was. It was just a shadow under the boat but obvioulsy a fish or even a baby whale.
Dad was discussing what we'd seen with some friends and they came to the conclusion it was either something called a 'black fish' or a baby whale. It didn't have a vertical tail like a fish, it was more like a fluke, I saw it come up out of the water through the cabin window and splash down again.
Jeeze, though, never underestimate water or what lives in it.
My name (not Yakut) means Surge of the sea.

Yakut