Rain means conditions far from perfect

THIS spring has been one of the wettest, or the wettest, on record. A good example is Alexandra, where this spring’s rainfall exceeded the annual rainfall for 2003.

The other indication it has been a wet spring is that I have fished a river only three times this season. My other outings have been on still waters.

With more heavy rain in places this week, things are not too promising for the weekend, especially in the south of the region.

The bigger rivers will be out for a while but the smaller streams are dropping quickly and may be fishable. East and North Otago could be worth a look.

The safest bet would be to fish a dam or a lake somewhere.

If you live in the Dunedin area, do not forget Sullivans dam. It has some nice rainbows in it and is close enough to pop over for a couple of hours fishing.

If the fish are rising in the evening, a midge pupa is a good choice of fly during the day. A damsel fly nymph is a good option or a Mrs Simpson. A Mrs Simpson is a good imitation of koura and there are plenty of them there.

The bigger fish feed on these so fishing an imitation gives a better chance of a whopper.

There are plenty of fish in the Southern Reservoir, too, due to the stocking for the Take a Kid Fishing day, but the surroundings are not so pleasant.

The Maniototo dams are always worth a visit but they are getting very weedy and the fishable area has reduced considerably over the last couple of weeks.

I had a midweek fishing session this week and picked the worst day from the weather point of view.

It was cold, wet and windy.

I had intended fishing a river, but a quick look at the Otago Regional Council website showed most rivers were rising, so it was back to the Maniototo dams.

Rutherfords is sheltered by a belt of trees, so I started there. I saw the odd rise and had a couple of takes but did not land anything in the first two hours.

There were no insects about that I could see, although gulls were picking something off the water. But whatever it was did not interest trout.

About 11.30am the wind went round to the southwest and the air temperature dropped. I moved to the most sheltered spot I could find and was soon into a nice 2kg rainbow, which was no surprise as there are only rainbows in the dam.

I immediately saw another fish rise and covered the general area for a few minutes. I hooked another fish which gathered a lot of weed on the line, but luckily it eventually cleared and I soon had a fish slightly bigger than the first in the net.

I tried Mathias and Blakely but weed and wind made it hard going so I called it a day.