Fishing the Travers River

Tricky Travers

A bad start to the day. Arriving fifteen minutes early at the Lake Rotoroa jetty, I saw two other flyfishermen about to board the water taxi that went to the head of the lake and the Travers River. Worse was to follow when boatman Bill Butters advised me that he had a full boatload and we would have to wait for the next trip. It turned out the Nelson guide and his client arrived late and had put Bill fifteen minutes late in his schedule. This also meant the hired gun would beat us to the river and so have the choice of the best stretch.
‘Don’t worry,’ said the Nelson guide,’we are going way up the river before starting to fish. Where do you think you will start in?’
‘At the swingbridge,’ I told him.
‘Oh,’ he said, ‘that’s where we had in mind’.
‘I’m sure we’ll work it out,’ I called as the boat nosed out from the jetty and headed up the lake for the 10 minute trip.
We settled down on the jetty to watch the ducks’ antics and wait for Bill’s return. The party consisted of my wife, Sue and our tramping mates, Helen and Paul. We were doing our usual tramping/fishing excursion which consisted of two hours walk up a river; two hours fishing for the boys and then the return journey. The day before we had done exactly that on the neighbouring Sabine River. The fishing had been hard as the river was very low thanks to an absence of rain all summer. However a lovely 2.5 kg brown taken from a riffle above the gorge had saved the day. We were looking for a busier day on the Travers as I knew the river a bit better, having fished there several times before.
Our hopes were rather dashed when Bill told us the fishing was also very hard on the Travers, as we eventually made our way up the lake. Apparently there had been a lot of anglers visiting the river over summer, probably due to many of the Nelson rivers being discoloured from the unusually heavy rainfall the area had suffered. As with the Sabine, the rain had missed the Travers and the river had fallen to near the level of the last, rather disastrous, summer. Last February, Bill and the other rangers had had to carry out fish rescues when the lower section of the river dried up completely. Bill said it was not quite as low this year but the fish were very spooky from all the angling attention. He suggested that fishing for the trout in the pools would be a waste of time as the trout were far too wary. Our best bet would be to fish the riffles.
I had already decided to do just that as that was where I had been picking up fish on the Motueka, Buller and Sabine Rivers. Bill said that the guides were resorting to size 18 nymphs and even then were having plenty of refusals. If the ‘guns’ were having trouble with the spooky fish, then us mere mortals were in big trouble.
Bill also confirmed that the guided party were heading for the swingbridge and would start fishing from there.
‘If I were you, I would start below there at the pool where the track goes back into the bush. We saw a few trout in that area when we camped up there for a night last week,’ he confided. I knew the pool that Bill meant, having fished to its wary inhabitants one year ago. It was about ¾ of an hour up the track so we would have to leave the girls to carry on to the swingbridge and meet them there for lunch. Fortunately Sue had been with me on the last excursion up the Travers so she knew the way.
When we reached the agreed starting point, we said goodbye to the girls and tackled up. I spied a nice looking deeper riffle just below the corner pool and installed Paul there while I went up to do battle with the wily foe in the big pool.

Advancing cautiously to the tail of the pool, I was rather surprised to see not one but five gray shadows moving around on the shingle bed.

I focussed my attnetion on the tail-end Charlie, which looked a nice 4-5 lb trout.







With only slightly-trembling fingers, I attached a size 16 Sawyer tie Pheasant Tail to the 1.5 kg fluorocarbon tippet. I knew from previous experience that false casting over these watchful trout was a no-no, so I fed some line out into the current and then flicked up the 5 weight line very gently. It landed like a feather with no reaction from the trout 2.5 m downstream. But there was also no reaction as the tiny nymph drifted over its nose a few seconds later.
‘I see’, I muttered, ‘its going to be one of those days.’ Off came the size 16 and on went one of my very few size 18’s. Same result. So next cast, I cast a bit closer to the trout, thinking that maybe the nymph was not drifting right over its nose. Bad idea! As the line landed, the trout shot off for the far, shaded bank. The next trout over also took alarm and moved up the pool. It came back down immediately but I knew it was spooked as it would not settle into a feeding position.
I threw a cast at it anyway and off it went. I did not bother with the rest of the trout in the pool as I figured they were not worth wasting any time on.





Moving upriver, I came to a shallower riffle. Kneeling on the bank above, I thought I could make out the shadow of a trout in amongst the rocks of the riffle bottom. So it proved when the first drift down the riffle of a size 14 Pheasant Tail was interrupted. I tightened carefully, remembering the lightweight tippet. A surprised brown surged up the current. A short fight ensued and it was not long before a 1.5 kg trout was flapping in the shallows. I retrieved my nymph with the forceps and off she went, no doubt a little wiser.
I could see Paul casting away at the trout in the first pool and I knew that would be absorbing all his attention for a while so I moved on upriver. Half an hour and one more trout later, I was quite pleased to at least have had some success even though the fish were nothing special. Paul caught me up and we swapped stories. His consisted of doing no better with the wary ones than I had but he had been fascinated to see so many trout in one pool. He reminded me that he needed a close up photo of me with a fish as he had been on the wrong side of the river when I had landed the one fish from the Sabine. I said he might be lucky given that I had two more fish than I had really expected.
We ambled up the river, fishing the riffles but with no more success. As we rounded the bend, we spied two nymphets. It was the girls who had crossed the swingbridge and come downstream looking for us. We sat down among the long grasses and devoured our lunches. It was a stunning place to have lunch with the hanging valleys of the Travers towering above us. Soon it was time to resume battle as we only had half an hour’s fishing time left. Paul had given up fishing and had his camera at the ready, wanting that ‘landing a good fish’ photo. But my ability did not match his expectations and I was unable to oblige. On reaching the swingbridge, I convinced Paul to have a go at the first pool above the bridge, as there was usually a good trout in residence.
I moved up to the riffle above Paul’s pool and started fishing the far side of the 20 metre wide stretch of water. Second drift down the far side of the riffle saw the indicator stop and a frenzied response to my lifting of the rod. A large brown thrashed on top of the water. Then it leapt two or three times, enough to reveal that it was in excess of 3 kg – a big trout by Travers standards. It surged up the rapids at an incredible rate with me struggling to recover line quickly enough to stay in contact. Behind me was Paul who had dropped his rod and picked up his camera when my first yell disturbed the solitude of the valley. However unless I could recover some of the flyline that was submerged in the rapids, there might be no landed trout. So it proved as the trout dived under a large rock near the top of the rapids, 20 metres up and left me connected only to the rock. Ah well, such a strong fight deserved a win to the trout.
Paul was left photo-less and shaking his head at the fury of the trout’s escape moves. We exchanged commiserations and it was time to pack up and move back down the track to catch up with the girls. They, of course, were short on solace but Bill was more sympathetic when he heard of the lost fish. He said it was as good a fish that he had heard of being hooked in the last few weeks so that was some comfort.
During our yarn on the trip back, I told Bill that a photo of him guiding the water taxi into Coldwater Hut jetty would be included in my forthcoming book ‘Hooked on Trout’. Bill said that would be the second time that was the case as he was already featured on the back of the original cover of Tony Busch’s guidebook. He said he would have a copy of my book ready for signing on my next visit to St.Arnaud. Somehow he knew I would be back for another go at those tricky Travers trout.