My good fly-fishing mate Craig & I had the Upper Waiau River on our perpetual ‘to do’ list, so we finally bit the bullet with grateful assistance from Rob & his sturdy Land Cruiser. Up, up, up then down, down, down on the rough & ready Malings Pass shingle road into the Waiau Valley on a cracker of a Sunday & a short & pleasant 1.5 hour hike up the river valley to the 6 bunk Waiau Hut.
When we arrived at the hut it was completely empty – yippee! But it was a short lived exuberance as this hut is part of the national Te Araroa track. By day’s end, our 6 bunk hut was host to 8 of us – snug space but nice folks.
We decided to kit up & head up river for a start, and give it a few hours to see how our luck might pan out. Then if the water proved not to be productive, head down river a couple of kilometres & fish our way back to the hut. We were extremely optimistic as it was an awesome day with loads of sunshine, zero wind and seriously gin clear water for spotting trout.
After 2-3 hours of walking/stalking up river, we’d not seen or even spooked a fish let alone hooked one. A few fly-fishing mates told us the Upper Waiau needs to be fished at dusk or even night, as that is when the Big Boys feel safe enough to drift out from under cut banks & have a feed. Sounds like a plausible theory, but there should be a few dumb ones in this water – maybe some 2-3 pounders taking advantage of the Big Boy free feeding runs. And there were plenty of quite deep pools for trout to hang in safely & with swimming pool-like water, we were able to easily see to the bottom in 6-10 feet deep water.
So we turned around & hiked a couple of kilometres below the hut & tried again, fishing up river. Sort of started to feel like that definition of crazy – doing the same thing over & over again and expecting a different result. Again no fish… But just as it was reaching the time when we needed to make our way back to the hut, we came upon one of the best pools of the day…and I fished my way up it in a methodical manner with a dry & dropper rig till I reached the eye. By this time, I’d sort of thrown in the towel on catching a fish & so for my last cast of the day I did a very lackadaisical roll cast & watched it drift down with too much slack line on the water. Indicator vanished and I lifted my rod too late but in time to get 2 or 3 decent tugs on my fly line & then nada. Ouch…
We had a jolly good night in the hut with good food, great beverages and loads of good chat. Woke up the next day to a howling Nor’wester roaring down the valley floor. We got back to the Land Cruiser & dumped our packs & kitted up with not much hope. Again we came across some stunning water & pools and I made a dozen or so casts with 25% of the casts getting blown right back at me…the wind was so wild that we even managed to get blown over ourselves twice!
So we are game to try again – John Kent’s book says the best water is from the Hope River confluence to Malings Pass so maybe a couple of night camp out is called for…
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