Mark rang up to see if I was keen to look for a trout in the Wairau - sounded like a good plan to me. I mentioned a strip where the dirt road runs beside the river that I’d seen a trout in the last two times I looked, and we made a plan to meet there.
He had already been fishing for a while when I arrived on my motorbike. He’d seen a few trout and tried a few lures. The trout had followed his lures a couple of times.
I set my rod up and put a dead cicada on for bait. The trees behind us were casting shadows on the water, making it hard to see the fish. I managed to get my bait out to a trout, but slight curiosity was about all I got. I haven’t had any luck using the cicadas since catching a trout with one a few weeks ago.
We fished the stretch of water for an hour or so before heading further up-stream where Mark had a few casts in a stretch of faster running water than we had just been fishing. There were trout feeding. I didn’t bother fishing there, leaving it for a guy in a bus that we had been talking to. Mark left for home and I watched the bus guy fly fish for a few minutes before riding further up the river to the spot where I caught the trout on the cicada previously.
A nice-sized trout was lazily swimming around the calm clear pool. I threw my cicada out to it. The trout took a look, but wasn’t interested. I just sat there and watched the trout for a while. It was so close I could have almost touched it.
