New Zealand

There were two reasons for going to New Zealand. Fishing and because I was flying over it, it seemed to be a shame not to visit.

I flew into the South Island, met my Dad, we hired a camper van and we set off. Since it was a fishing trip and we had both been there, we skipped most of the tourist things and focused on catching fish.

That said, the first day was just getting from Christchurch down into the fishing zone. We went down the coast and there are some amazingly scenic spots. The Moeraki Boulders are just bizarre, huge round stones just sitting on the beach. Apparently they form like pearls around imperfections in the sediment, then erode out of the cliffs to be slowly eroded away by the sea.

All the way down you go around a corner and find some deserted beach, spectacular cliff or amazing vista. If you go that way, take the scenic route.

We based ourselves in Gore for a few days and fished the Mataura. There was a side trip down to Invercargill (Discovering the beach at night with the wind blowing was an out of world experience) then back up through the middle of the South Island, stopping at various spots up the Mataura to fish before hitting the central lakes.

We tried our luck around Wanaka and Twizel, then meandered back to Christchurch. Nothing huge was caught. My biggest was a 1.7kg brown which is nice, but certainly not a huge fish. I got a total of 40 trout for the trip, all released. It was great fun though, I'll have to do it again.

I've stripped out the pictures of just fish. For those, you can see them here.