Brimstone

We stalked several more brooding shapes, before eventually spotting an absolute submarine lurking alongside a log laid along the opposite bank. It took 10 careful, stealthy minutes to inch our way up on this monster, and crouched behind a bush, literally two rod lengths behind this leviathan, I tried executing a number of tricky, short, looping roll-casts to get the fly around the bush and into the seam of the current passing the double-figure trout. We persevered for 15 minutes, changing flies and trying again and again with the awkward delivery, before eventually a heavy, leggy black mutant of a fly plipped into the water and ran mere inches past the fish’s eye. The gills flared and I struck… and the attached submarine now became a Polaris missile!

Julian had warned me. In tight quarters like that, giving line will all but doom you, so you hang on and hope to get the preferred outcome of the following three – line breaks, rod breaks, or you net the fish.

This was unfortunately 11 or 12 pounds of unfiltered rage, and the dice landed on ‘line snap’. Julian shrugged as I stood shell-shocked.

“That’s the way it goes with these big guys.’ he exclaimed, flatly.

We pushed on. During the morning, several more encounters ensued with similar results before Julian suggested we head down to the lake after lunch to wade the creek mouths.

Turning up at the lakeside in the bright afternoon sun was a stark change from the bosky shade of the earlier pursuits. Lake Rotorua spread out before us. An intricately carved and brightly painted Marae, a traditional Māori meeting house, stood on the shore, it’s red roof a striking contrast to the verdant green along the shores. Next to the lake, a separate shallow pool steamed and simmered, the mineral bottom an unearthly orange colour, and the air was filled with the pungent smell of rotten eggs, in case you needed a reminder of where you were. A large section of the lake shore was fringed with a thick slick of black volcanic tar, so we carefully circumnavigated the wader-ruining black goo to enter the water.

At this point the experience became weirdly familiar… this was like stalking bonefish on the flats of Cuba! In the thigh deep water, the white sandy bottom was the perfect canvass upon which to spot the large, vivid chartreuse smudges, which is how the singular, big patrolling brown trout appeared in the slightly coloured but clear lake, scuffed by a brisk afternoon breeze.

Julian had swapped the fly for a tiny size 10 rabbit zonker fry pattern. The game plan was to stalk a fish and try and get a cast about 4ft ahead of it, allowing a couple of seconds for the fly to sink and then executing a long, slow strip.

Despite the breeze, this wasn’t too challenging, as a careful approach meant being able to get our quarry within casting range, and after a couple of attempts I spotted a cruising shape and landed the fly in the kill-zone. Two long strips, then the shape accelerated and the line locked solid.

The fish went off like a locomotive… this really was like bonefishing! Then it was followed by a succession of very un-bonefish-like acrobatics, spectacularly throwing sprays of glittering water-droplets up into the actinic New Zealand sunlight. The fish charged, swerved, leapt and thrashed all the way to the net, and it was one ecstatic pom who finally, reverently, lifted that extraordinary beast from the water to admire it’s piscine beauty. This was a ‘pb’ by a huge margin and surely not one I was going to be able to beat very easily.

But the fact is… I did! The next fish, almost shockingly different in colour and markings, was even bigger, although whilst it did its best impression of a barracuda at full-tilt, it bizarrely changed direction and literally charged head-first straight into the net! Not only a new pb, but one of the shortest fights I’d ever had!

And still this miniature flat wasn’t finished. Monster trout no.3 lead me a merry dance. I trailed the fish for some distance, losing line, gaining line, heading back towards the wafting, noxious steam from the sulphur pools. Time and again this fish surged and ran. At one point Julian darted forward to thrust the net in its path only for this muscled torpedo to show remarkable agility and porpoise cleanly straight out of it without even slowing down. The war of attrition was eventually concluded, and with lactic acid burning in my forearm, I lifted the net to reveal a brown trout of brute-like proportions, certainly on the cusp of double figures. Insofar as a fish could have a facial expression, this one look rather angry indeed, and eyed us resentfully as it was carefully photographed and released.

The day was winding down now, but there was still time to take the tally up to four, and after a period of calm, methodically wading the submerged delta, I spotted a dark shaped gliding slowly along the fringes where the white sand met the darker, vegetable matter on the bottom of the lake. I followed it for some time, trying to second guess its movements and plot an interception, and eventually I put out a cast. I lost sight of the fish, but Julian could see it from his angle and urgently yelled “He’s on it, he’s on it!” and a second later I responded with “Yep, he’s on!” as the line tightened and I strip-struck into the weight of my unseen adversary.

I lifted the rod to cushion the explosive reaction and it lurched downwards in response, reel clutch singing over the whooping of my guide.

Julian was dancing around excitedly, pumping his fist.

“Woohooo! Mate, this one’s a beaut!” he yelled in his broad kiwi accent.

It was too.

This fish was having none of it. It leapt and thrashed like a berserker, switching violently back and forth as I frantically mirrored with the rod to keep the line behind the fish and exert maximum pressure. Several times the backing knot rattled through the guides, but suppressing my anxiety at exerting too much pressure, I halted the runs by gently palming the whirring spool, and bit by bit, recovered the line.

Eventually, the speed of the runs and switchbacks began to subside, and whilst this net-shy beauty gave us a real runaround every time it got sight of the net, eventually a well timed lunge from Julian secured my prize, and it was staggering, sublime and just perfect. With a tail like a shovel!

We didn’t weight it. We didn’t weight any of them. There was no need really – every fish just blew me away with its size, power and beauty. Weighing and measuring would have somehow diminished the moment.

I heard a phrase recently:  ‘comparison is the death of joy’ - a mantra perhaps we should all live by more. This day was in a league of it’s own. I don’t know whether I’ll ever ‘better’ it, and I won’t beat myself up trying to do so. It was, in its own right, a joyous and all encompassing New Zealand experience that I shall treasure for all my days. Kia Ora!