Fishing Spots

The Shag River 2007/08

One of my favourite places to fish is right in my backyard… well almost so I guess if I had a home water this would be it..

I live within 5 minutes of a fantastic trout stream known as the Shag River.
This is an unusual river (for new Zealand that is) in that it doesn’t have the “queen’s chain” which applies to most waters in NZ.
The Queen’s chain is a strip along each river, lake etc that allows for public access rights but much of the shag River is privately owned although requesting and gaining access is not really a problem as the land owners are very approachable.

The river suffers a bit in the summer and the flows can all but stop in drought times but there are many great holes and runs that hold some really stunning brown trout, fish numbers aren’t all that high but the quality and size of the fish is usually very good with many fish exceeding 5lbs and at the right time of year there is a good chance of encountering some fine sea run trout… Not bad for a river that you can easily cast across.

The fish usually are pretty wary but every now ant then they really come alive, the best evening this season for me resulted in an excellent brown at 6lbs and another nice fish weighing in at 5lbs.

There seems to be a pretty stable population of Brown Trout, I haven’t seen any Rainbows at all, there are also flounder and mullet in the lower sections and a generous population of eels along the entire length of the river that I fish and at the right time of year it is possible to encounter some pretty good sea run trout. I haven’t heard of anyone ever finding any salmon in the Shag River.

The Shag River a lovely lowland stream

In general the fish are in good condition and predominantly good sized fish, this season every fish I caught in the Shag was between 3 1/2lbs and 6lbs, the best I saw was 8lbs (I know this because I know someone that caught him and released him again) but I never even got a chance to get a cast at him.

Generally I spend most of my time sight fishing using a pheasant tail nymph or occasionally a dry fly, something like a Twilight Beauty. If you strike an evening rise you can have a lot of fun just as it gets dark by landing a woolly bugger (black) about a metre upstream of the rise and quickly stripping it back quickly, often the fish will really hammer the lure. I use my floating line to do this as it helps keep the lure above the weed.

I am sure I could catch a lot more fish in the river if I was to fish it by dragging lures through the pools and runs when it was dark but for me I prefer the challenge of sight fishing, next season I may look into some camo clothing to assist because I do really seem to get spotted really easily especially so when the river is low and clear.

The link below will allow you to take a look at one of my favourite places and show some information about the Shag River.

Map and detailed fishing information