Fishing with a Friend

Gene Decker approached me in November to ask if I wanted to travel to the South Island of New Zealand to fish. I hemmed and hawed a bit and talked with my wife and she encouraged me to go. Of course, she also wanted to go. We had been there in 2011 doing the tourist thing and we both absolutely loved the country; probably our favorite vacation! I asked Gene about Vonne going and he asked if she fished; I said no as did he. Nevertheless, Vonne told me to go! I was still a little anxious; Gene is nearing 90, he was a relatively new acquaintance and I wasn’t quite sure how things would be. Gene has traveled to NZ for the past 30 years to fish and meet with his friends there. One of his past travel companions was Doc Sheets; I know a lot of you knew him. As an emeritus CSU forestry/wildlife biologist faculty member, Gene had given workshops and lectures in New Zealand and hosted some of their students in Fort Collins. So, I knew he was familiar with the country and the people. I also talked with his daughter about Gene’s health. She said as far as she knew, he was in excellent health and, while she offered to go with him, he said no because she doesn’t fish. My wife felt better about that!

So, off we went leaving Loveland on Thursday February 20, the day after our Rocky Mountain Flycasters Expo. We arrived in Auckland on Saturday the 22nd and connected to Christchurch. We were met at the airport by Gene’s long time friend Ross Millichamp, the former regional fisheries manager for Canterbury Province. In addition, Ross is an author and known world wide for his work with the New Zealand salmon populations. Salmon were introduced to New Zealand in the late 1800s from California and Ross grew up fishing for them. Ross was off hunting on Stewart Island in 2008 and became infected with a rare flesh eating bacteria. He almost died and was left with two artificial legs and loss of other faculties. But, he owns and flies an airplane, operates a jet boat and enjoys other tools of the sportsman’s trade. He and his wife Jinny, who is a physician warmly welcomed us into their house. That night, Ross’ parents came to dinner as did an American couple from Washington State. Ross and Ginny had never met them but they were friends of a friend and were welcomed to join us, even though the friend was not there. The warmth of the New Zealand natives is astounding.

After a good night’s sleep, we flew to Dunedin where we rented a car and headed west. Gene had made reservations for a motel in Alexandra, about half way between Dunedin and Queenstown. Alexandra is a quiet town with several restaurants that is experiencing growth from people moving out of Queenstown. As with many tourist destinations, New Zealand is seeing an influx of wealthy people from around the world that have caused consternation about the vitality of Queenstown. So, folks are relocating to Alexandra and other surrounding communities. The motel was cozy, had two bedrooms, a kitchen and a bathroom. Nothing fancy but certainly acceptable for a fishing headquarters. About 6 that night, Gene said “lets go fishing”! I said really? He said it would be good to get out and stretch our legs so off we went. We drove about 15 minutes and started fishing on the Manaherikia, a smaller river, perhaps the size of the Poudre in September. It was a beautiful evening and, although I had a few strikes neither one of us landed anything. But Gene was right; it felt really good to get out, dust off the fishing cobwebs and stretch our legs.

About 9 am the next morning, the phone started ringing. Several of Gene’s friends were in contact to organize our fishing outings. We had planned to fish with Saul, a young married man with two small children. He showed up with his former boss, John who is 77, the salt of the earth (including his language!) and a bit of an amateur historian. James and Gerald also called on us and we made future plans with them. Saul, John, Gene and I piled into Saul’s pickup and headed towards Poolburn Reservoir which had been constructed to provide irrigation water to orchards and vineyards in the valley below. It was quite a site to see where they had filmed much of the Lord of the Rings Trilogy; the landscape was quite striking. Despite 8 hours of hard fishing by each of us, not a single fish was caught; Saul had a couple of strikes but that was it. Everyone was surprised because it was a beautiful day with a slight breeze and Saul, John and Gene had done very well there in past years.

Lord of the Rings Country

The next day, we were met by Gerald Tilford, another long time friend of Gene’s. Gerald owns a game ranch for red deer where he puts people up and allows them to harvest trophy stags for a lot of money. He is also a fishing guide. Gerald had a couple of clients from Tasmania who were avid fishermen and they joined us as well. We drove about an hour to the Teviot River, tailwaters for one of the reservoirs. When we got to our destination, Gene and Gerald were devastated to see a car!, then another! Of course there was about 5 miles of fishable waters so for someone like me who sees cars at every pulloff on the Poudre and Big T, I was kind of chuckling to myself. One interesting point; one of the cars was a guide who had a client. In the windshield was a placard saying they went downstream. Neat idea! The river was about half the size of the Poudre but had deep holes and nice riffles. Fishing was excellent, here. Although smallish browns; a trophy was 15”, they were plentiful and eager to hit an or other dry fly even though nothing was flying. Everyone caught plenty of fish that day.

A nice Teviot River Brown

The next three days days, Gene and I fished on our own on the Lindis, Manaherikia and Fraser all just outside Alexandra. Fishing on the Lindis was interesting. I caught and landed fish on my first three casts, then nothing the rest of the day. We couldn’t figure out what they were eating. Gene had the same results. Driving back from the Lindis, we stopped and met Sue, Gerald’s wife. Sue operates a flying service that caters to mostly Asian tourists. I could immediately tell that Gene was part of Sue and Gerald’s family. The Manaherikia was pretty productive with larger fish (all rainbows) than on the Teviat. The fish eagerly accepted my and I had one break me off around a submerged branch. At the end of that day, there was a large pool with rising fish. I couldn’t get them to eat my adams so I lengthened my leader to about 15 feet with 6x tippet then tied on a #22 goddard caddis. I immediately hooked up. I believe that is the smallest dry fly I have ever caught something on. Mid day we stopped for meat pies. Mine was filled with red deer. The owner came out and talked with us. Another example of a local who was as friendly as could be. Turns out he operates a red deer farm so I asked him if I was eating his product. He said no, it was probably a deer that had been shot from a helicopter. Turns out that red deer and other game species introduced a number of years ago (there are no native mammals in New Zealand), are out of control and their Department of Conservation is trying to thin them out. Sharpshooters apparently can put one between the eyes out of a moving helicopter. Hunting season is year-round and there are no limits on any of the introduced game species throughout the country.

Lindis River. Those willows eat flies!

The last night in Alexandra, Gene and I went to a Mexican food restaurant. There was a large group in the restaurant and as we were paying our checks, Gene, who likes to talk to everyone started talking to a person who was also paying his bill from the larger group. Turns out, they were part of an advisory group to the Department of Conservation and were having a quarterly meeting. Gene’s new friend had been in Fort Collins many times and was friends with one of Gene’s best friends on campus. The individual taught workshops at Pingree. Small world! I started talking to one of the other folks and mentioned I was involved with TU and we were working on a large project to displace an invasive trout with our native cutthroat trout. So, we talked a bit and he said there was a conservation group in New Zealand that was lobbying to remove all invasive species from the islands, including the trout. The introduced trout have displaced, and in some places, caused extinction of some of their native fish. I asked him about how that might affect tourism and he said it is a big issue. He estimated there would be some sort of compromise eventually reached.

The next day (now Friday the 28th), we packed up and drove to the town of Pukerau, a small village outside of Gore. James, Marie and their son Timothy (15) met us with open arms. They own a nursery that specializes in native plants. James was a graduate student who was working on urban geese issues and someone suggested he spend some time with Gene in Fort Collins. After James returned to New Zealand, he worked in fisheries for a time, specializing in eels. He also guided anglers. James and Marie also have a son who goes to college at Mesa State in Grand Junction. He is on a scholarship for BMX racing (I didn’t know there were scholarships for this but it’s a thing!) and visits Gene in Loveland every now and then. They also have a daughter in Dunedin who just gave birth. Gene lamented that he knew James before he was married; going back some 30 years. And now his kid’s kids are having babies! That night we went to dinner and were joined by Marie’s parents. Her father was an extra during the filming of the Lord of the Rings movies playing one of the horde of Orcs (at least I think that’s what he told me). Again, very friendly with a complete stranger and they were not shy about expressing their opinions about the state of politics in New Zealand.

Since Timothy was having a birthday party with a bunch of his friends, James, Gene and I drove to Manapouri, not far from Te Anu to fish the Waiau River. This river is about as large as the North Platte around Alcova, WY and had a fair amount of water in it. Yet, the wading was difficult and the streamsides were almost impossible to safely navigate. There had been widespread floods in the region about three weeks earlier and all the large vegetation had been flattened, covering up holes and depressions that normally exist in the riparian zone. When we first arrived at the river, Gene told me to go with James who was agile and fast; I had trouble keeping up with him. James gave me a heavily weighted nymph to tie on and told me to fish it across and downstream like a wet fly. I did this for several hours, seeing James catch a couple of fish; I hooked and lost 2. I got tired and hungry and was headed back to the truck when I came across James fishing off the point of a confluence where a small channel rejoined the river. The opposite bank of the channel was willow covered and I saw a fish rise under the willows. By then I had tied on a parachute adams and thought I would give it a shot. Within 30 minutes I had hooked 8 and landed 4 rainbows; one that was 22”, another 15”. New Zealanders are puzzled by our measurement of fish. They prefer to estimate how heavy fish are and prefer pounds over kilograms because there are 2.2 lbs per KG so the fish sounds heavier. James estimated my fish at 5 lbs and 2 lbs. All in all, this was a physically challenging day of fishing and was the one place my 89 year old friend struggled. In fact, we later learned that he could not reach his favorite spot where he had previously and routinely caught large fish. That night we retired to our motel in Manapouri after having dinner with Mike a friend of Gene and James. A really nice guy who had about 4 streams of income; very common among the folks I met on this trip.

A nice Waiau Rainbow The next day, we fished the Mavora Lakes which are two natural lakes joined by a stream. Gene and I fished the stream while James fished in the lower lake. Beautiful water everywhere but nary a strike among the three of us. During lunch the stream became inundated by a large group of kayakers from a nearby college. So, we moved to another river called the Oreti. This river was similar in size to the Waiau but without the vegetation. Beautiful accessible water with several braids but neither Gene nor I had a strike. I did move a fish with a prince nymph but couldn’t entice it to hit. When we met back at the truck, James showed up with a nice, 4 lb brown. New Zealanders don’t quite understand the ethic we maintain; they like to eat the big ones. In fact, James said we would have it for dinner that night at their house. Well, when we arrived at the house, the lovely aromas of a home cooked lamb shank dinner were wafting through the air. Needless to say, the fish was put in the freezer.

The next day, James and Marie had to work in their nursery so Gene and I explored Gore a little. Very nice quaint town with lots of coffee shops, restaurants, stores, and a very large sculpture of a rainbow trout. We found a liquor store and purchased a couple of very nice Pinot Noirs from the Alexandra region for our hosts. About 3 PM, we headed out to fish at the confluence of the Mataura and Waikaia rivers. Again, floods had ravaged the rivers, but the waters were clear and fish were visible, especially in the backwaters. One such fish frustrated Gene to no end. He estimated the fish at 8 lbs but couldn’t get it to eat anything; the fish just kept lazily swimming around. By the end of the day, James had another nice one; Gene and I got skunked.

The next day (March 3), Gene and I packed up, said our goodbyes and headed back to Dunedin. Along the way, we stopped and met the new grandbaby and her mother and father. Again, it was old home week for Gene and, by now, I felt like part of the family as well. Our flights home were uneventful, but airports were pretty empty. The first case of Corona virus hit New Zealand while we were there; now they are in total lockdown. What took us two days to fly out took us 3 hours to come home; such is travel over the timeline.

At the start of this travelogue, I mentioned my anxiety about traveling with Gene. I can now say, with no hesitation, that this was one of the most enjoyable trips of my life. He is a generous, kind, knowledgeable and caring man with a truly outgoing personality. We did a lot of driving without maps and Gene remembered every turn and was an excellent navigator and gently reminded me to keep on the left side of the road when I need reminding. People he causally meets become lifelong friends and I am sure he made new friends on this trip. While my wife and I had a wonderful trip in 2011, this trip got us into some very interesting back country, many dirt roads, and access to marvelous and beautiful waters. We fished a total of 9 straight days with intermittent success but my memories of this trip will far exceed the fishing. I could say that several floods in the past three months impacted river beds, riparian zones and macroinvertebrates, thus impacting our fishing success, but in the end, the trip was about meeting exceptional people that I have come to embrace as my own friends in New Zealand.

Gene taking a little break