What does a guide do on his day off you may ask ? Go fishing of course ! I had a couple of free days in my diary and after a phone call to a friend had locked one of the days in for a days fishing.Trev has just recently moved to Wanaka from the UK and works for Carl Mcneil @ Swift Fly Fishing building Epic glass fly rods. We decided we'd get away early as it was a Sunday and there was sure to be other angler's poking around. We arrived at the Fish and Game access around 8am, suited up and headed down to the river, there had been a little bit of rain over night and there was a fresh dusting of snow on the surrounding hill tops which kept the air temperature cool first thing.The morning began fairly slowly with only a few fish out visibly feeding, none of which showed any interest in our nymphs. Even with our well presented casts and drag free drifts they just wouldn't eat our flies. Lunch time rolled around so we sat down on a high bank over looking the next pool to eat lunch and observe things, something I do a lot more of these days as it's amazing what can materialize from nowhere and then disappear just as quickly ! We sat and watched for a minute or two and saw a good fish of around 4lb drift across from the deeper section of the river and take up station mid-stream behind a medium sized boulder . It began swaying back and forth in the current intercepting nymphs, occasionally darting around chasing smaller fish out of it's pool. After finishing our lunch it was my turn to cast to a fish, I moved into position and laid out a perfect cast just to the left and around a meter ahead of the trout, giving my well weighted nymph with it's size 16 dropper plenty of time to get down to the fish, the fish moved across, my indicator shot under and I was on ! After a 5 minute arm wrestle Trev carefully slipped the net under the fish and we were on the board !

Trevor hooked 2 more fish in quick succession but unfortunately both came unstuck after a short fight, both fish he had struck quite late on and I think he just hadn't got a good hook set on them. We carried on upstream and crossed the main river to where another wee stream flows into the one we were fishing. This stream is known for its tough -hard fighting browns and fantastic may fly hatches. We didn't see anything in the first 2 pools so decided to again sit down and observe things for 10 minutes, sure enough not long after a big nose broke the surface a few meters away and another not too much further ahead of that ! We both tied on small CDC emerger patterns, and proceeded to cast to the rising fish. My fish rose twice and took a natural right beside my fly, but seemed reluctant to take mine so I went smaller in both tippet and dry fly size, next cast the fish drifted over lifted under my dry fly and gently sipped it down, 1...2...3 I counted in my head then tightened up and boom I was on ! After an epic battle i had a 5.5lb stunner of a brown trout in my net.

Trev also managed a cracking brown trout to the net also around the 5.5lb mark again on a small CDC emerger. After a tough morning our fortunes had changed ! Nothing beats a fun days fishing with a good mate.

PHOTO CREDIT: Trevor Bourne (EPIC Rodmeister)