There is little doubting that Duncan Wilcox qualifies as a bona fide Trout Bum. He spends time fishing in the UK and then heads to New Zealand chasing trout. In this article he looks at the differences he encounters between the two destinations and gives some helpful pointers too
I moved to the UK from New Zealand with my British partner two years ago. I have fished off and on in New Zealand since 1987 and emigrated in 2002. I was fortunate enough to make a trip back for three months earlier this year to fish out the trout season and now, with two UK seasons under my belt, I thought I might be able to provide a modest contrast & compare piece on the two fisheries. Much of this will be my own observations and opinions, with a few facts thrown in for good measure and it is all up for discussion or dispute.
Deal To Make You Squeal?
New Zealand, by many measures, is a very young country and to that end many things are a wee bit looser in terms of the where, what & hows of fly-fishing compared to the UK. A non-resident season license will set you back a mere £78 (a daily license is about £12) and a resident license is all of £60. And that may sound like a lot compared to the UK’s £27 rod license, but in New Zealand your license pretty much makes the whole country your fly-fishing oyster (except for Lake Taupo District which has it own license scheme and some back country rivers).
In general, you cannot own water in New Zealand, and they embrace the concept of the Queen’s Chain, which gives you (legally) the right to access the water and the riverbank up to the high water mark. You do come across some hiccups (I can count them on a single hand) where the farmer or landowner will challenge your right to fish, but if you’ve gained access to the river at a public place like a road bridge, and waded up stream and not ventured beyond the high water mark, you are fine.
There has been some movement over the past 10 years to go more in the direction of the UK where water is ‘owned’ and monies are charged for fishing rights but fortunately, at least on my last visit, New Zealand does not even come close to the level of water control & ownership that the UK currently has. It is quite a challenge in the UK to find affordable fishing (many, many thanks to the West Country Angling Scheme for making that possible for me) as £250 per rod, per day (or even £60 to £100) is not really financially sustainable. And I get a bit annoyed with many of the angling clubs who lease loads of prime water but never seem to fully use it. It is one thing to control rights to a river and have it be in constant use & enjoyment by your members, yet another to do so and have the river sitting mostly idle, in the prime of the season (and not even offer day tickets). One of the good by products of New Zealand’s more affordable fishing is the barriers to entry or giving it a go are far lower, so it is much easier for younger or new people to take up fly-fishing which is something I worry about here in the UK.
Waders, Weather, Distance & Danger
During the entire time I have been fishing in New Zealand, I have never worn waders. Bog standard approach is to wet wade with some polypropylene tights under a synthetic pair of shorts with wading boots, neoprene socks and gravel guards. Having been in the UK for two seasons now, I finally bit the bullet this season and purchased a pair of Scierra waders. The primary reason for my purchase was that I realized that in the UK I spend MUCH more time actually in the water compared to New Zealand and subsequently, I was getting much colder. With the New Zealand kit, you wade into a pool, fish your way through it and then maybe walk along the riverbank for 5-10 minutes to the next enticing bit of water. In that time, your polypropylene tights & shorts have pretty much been blown dry. And I did that through the whole season, from the 1st of October (when it can still be a bit nippy) to the end of April (when most def Jack Frost can be nipping at your toes & nose). In the UK, you enter the river or stream at the beginning of the beat and pretty much wade up stream for 90% of the time until you break for lunch or finish for the day. Not a chance to dry off and you remain soaking wet in our less than steamy English summers.
In the last issue of Eat, Sleep, Fish Lee Watts gave a succinct and quite accurate snapshot of what New Zealand’s weather can be like – in a word, hellacious. I often tell my foreign friends that the only thing I know for certain that will kill you in New Zealand is the weather. And a good mate of mine likes to say, “If you want two weeks of good fishing in New Zealand, plan to be there for two months.” Which may be a wee bit of an exaggeration but not much. New Zealand is an island nation with an island weather pattern (much like the UK) with a severely varied topography, which has its pluses and minuses. New Zealand weather can change on a dime or maybe a pence in the UK - from a sunny-with-blue-skies-and-zilch-wind kind of day to grey clouds, pelting rain or hail and winds just short of gale force. But New Zealand’s varied topography offers you some level of opportunity to escape the hellacious-ness you may find yourself in. Often, if you are able to move to the next valley or two in any direction, you stand a good chance of finding radically different and quite fishable weather conditions.
And the distances you will cover in New Zealand are significantly greater compared to the UK. The bulk of my fly fishing in the UK has been in Devon, Dorset, Somerset and Wiltshire, with most of the beats coming in under a mile of fishable water and most with convenient drive up parking. In a typical New Zealand day I would walk 6-8 miles and sometimes much more – often forgetting about the return trip to my Land Rover, which made for some in-the-dark-with-torch returns. And there are many serious backcountry rivers that require a half to a full day’s hike with a fully loaded backpack stuffed with the requisite camping gear before you even flick your rod.
And although New Zealand does not have the plethora of killing machines that Australia has, there is danger in spades. When you overnight hike into one of the backcountry rivers or even do a day’s fish up some remote valley, you are in real wilderness and dense bush, in a very sparsely populated area, with 99% certainty of no cell phone coverage (a personal emergency locator beacon is highly recommended) where simple accidents like twisting or breaking your ankle could prove to be deadly. A year does not go by in New Zealand without a story of the remains of someone who vanished 10 years ago in the bush being discovered. In the UK, in my experience anyways, you are usually not too far from a house or farmhouse or pub for that matter, and many river beats (like the Upper Teign) have National Trust or public footpaths running alongside them which have a steady stream of dog walkers or picnic folks parading by. Help at hand.
Techniques & Styles
One of the major differences in New Zealand fly-fishing is the dominance of sight fishing (versus blind prospecting) to very big trout. New Zealand’s trout populations are very low compared to many parts of the world, with its most populated rivers maxing out at 250 fish per mile (compared to 5-6,000 fish a mile in many Montana rivers). So you’d be seriously wasting your fishing time blind casting to a lot of empty water. With a good pair of Polaroid sunglasses & co-operative weather conditions you can stealthily walk the banks and productively cover much more water – and find your fish. There are quite a few lowland rivers (like the Opihi) that approximate UK water conditions, and blind fishing is the method to use as spotting is not really a viable option. These are also the only New Zealand rivers I could envision possibly using French or Czech nymphing successfully as they are the only ones that you could get that close to the trout.
Casting to a sighted big trout turns up the performance pressure knob several notches or more (think volume 11 in Spinal Tap), add in a 15 to 20 foot leader with a big dry & nymph dropper; a decent, stiff headwind; and, pardon the cliché but it is true, gin clear water where you can see every movement of the fish & vice a versa, and you have your work cut out for you. Yes, in the UK we do, in a way, cast to sighted fish when you are casting to surface feeding fish & you see the rise. But I think it is a different kettle of fish so to speak when you can so clearly spot the big trout and then watch in real-time their reactions to your cast, the drift of your flies and, hopefully, the take.
And casting in New Zealand is not so much about distance but more about accuracy, consistency and precision. In New Zealand they often say your 1st cast is your most important, and each cast after that your chances of hooking the trout drop off by 50%, which may be a bit severe but also contains a kernel of truth. That said, I would say the casting required to fish the UK waters is more technical than New Zealand from the perspective that in the course of your fishing day/season you need to tap into your full armory of casting ammo. Much of this is due to the low tree canopy (very low in some cases) and bank foliage which has forced me to use more roll casts, more bow & arrow casts, more side arm casts, more left handed casts, more curve casts, more over-the-shoulder-casts, etc.… than I have EVER used before. Your biggest technical casting challenge in New Zealand will be the wind and that can be handled with a high angled back cast & keeping your loops tight as & your fly line close to the water’s surface. Or a side arm cast also work wonders by also keeping the line low & close to the water surface thus minimizing wind resistance or you can take a crack at the constant motion Belgian cast.
In my New Zealand fly-fishing experience there certainly are hatches, but I would say not on parallel with what is discussed or claimed for in the UK, whether past or present, real or imagined. The Mataura River in Southland probably has one of the biggest reputations for a New Zealand river with respectable hatches and I have certainly experienced the frustration of fishing the willow grub season in Southland without a willow grub fly, which is absolutely required. But my bog standard rig is what the UK folks call New Zealand style, a dry fly with a nymph dropper which I can whole heartedly attest to as working just fine (both in NZ & the UK). It covers both surface and sub-surface feeding and is less prone to tangles & knots. I usually start with a #12 or #14 Parachute Adams (Royal Wulf is good too) with either a #16 or #18 bead-head Pheasant Tail or GRHE and if that is not producing results, I may switch to a #14 Blow Fly or Humpy pattern and tie on New Zealand guide Chris Dore’s go-to fly, the Glister Nymph. Usually results in results. And yes, New Zealand does have beetle, hopper & cicada flashes so be prepared and if your lucky to be there during a beech tree mast year, you will be in for some serious mouse action – frighteningly fun.
One small frustration with the UK is how tough it is to find & buy smaller flies – I am talking like size #18 or #20, both dries & nymphs. I would have to say from my UK fly buying experience that 95% of the online stores stop at size #16 (I normally do tie my own but had to leave my kit in New Zealand due to UK Customs hassles – soon to be remedied). If I am not having success with a trout, rather than just change flies I tend to drop a size or two. And I cannot tell you how many 5 or 6 or 8 to 10 pound NZ trout I have hooked & landed on size #18 or #20 flies.
One of the things I have had to adjust to since moving to the UK is the speed of the strike – much faster here than New Zealand. When you see the trout take your fly in New Zealand, the common mantra is to say “God Save the Queen” (or the real Kiwi phrase – “Bloody Hell – a fish”) before lifting your rod, otherwise you stand a high probability of pulling the fly straight out of a big trout’s mouth. Something to which Pete will readily attest to during his New Zealand visit but I have had the exact opposite problem my first season in the UK – way, way too slow on the strike.
Well that is a short & sweet summary of the 2 fisheries from my observational point of view. They both have their merits and demerits but hey, you are still fishing for trout, in beautiful surroundings and hopefully, with some great mates.
If you would like to contact Duncan regarding fishing in NZ or UK feel free to email him at
duncan@troutbum.org