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Angling Report: Jan 2004 Lake Brunner Fly Fishing Report

January 2004 overall was hot and sunny with low clear river conditions and December's high water tempertures continued unabated. Dry fly fishing action was marred by the lack of cicada activity in our region. The past 2 years have delivered awesome cicada action, but this summer must have been a lull between hatch cycles - these vary from annual, 3 yearly to as long as 17 years...

Jan 11th - 17th 2004: Fred Sutler returned on his third visit in 14 months. His parting words to his wife were that he'd probably catch 60 fish for the week, but in fact he actually landed 61... Weather was wonderful through the period, with hot sunny days and low water levels. High water temperatures made for some challenges, with local lakes at 22C and even the Grey was 20.4C at Ahaura. However, we did get one dull day and fish responded to it by giving Fred the day of a lifetime, and putting him into first place for the most fish landed with us in one day - a total of 17, all caught throwing streamers along the lake margins.


Fred with a 4.5lb brown trout caught a point blank range in a narrow channel.	Another trout poses with Fred on a bright West Coast day on Lake Brunner.

Jan 11th - 17th 2004: David Jaquith, here on his first trip to New zealand, was expecting to find the fishing challenging. Instead, on the 22nd Jan, the fish broke all the usual rules and fed with reckless abandon. On several occasions a marginal cast was rewarded with the fish hearing the #16 bead-head nymph land and chasing it aggressively downstream! The record of 17 fish set the week before by Fred Sutler (above) was broken by David on 22nd as he landed 21 fish for the day!


The first fish of the day, a 6.5lb'er..	Dave's Run....

A nice fat hen fish...	followed by a nice male....

Dave poses with a fat Lake Brunner brown caught in hand-to-hand combat mode among the white pines along the south-eastern lake shore. W landed 6 in an hour and a half, none further than a rod-length away from the boat.	This was one of 6 fish which grabbed the #6 Royal Wullf on a local river, a fly David disparagingly referred to as "A small bird!"