When fishing at near home localities it is easy to load up the car with all one’s fishing gear, excluding the kitchen sink, and have a happy and productive excursion. It is a different ball game if your fishing gear is confined to what you can reasonably carry in your backpack or wheely bag. Many comfort items such as clothes, toilet gear, guide books etc have first priority. So your fishing gear is restricted to the bare minimum, and that being the most effective to cover a wide range of fish habitats.
So what to do? What gear to take?
If you are a golfer, and many anglers are, or have been, I suggest the following experiment. Let’s say you are a competent golfer and regularly score a round of 85 say, using a full set of clubs carried in a wheely bag. Next time out just carry two clubs and no wheely bag (I suggest a five iron and putter) and see what your score is. Once you have accustomed yourself to this restriction I predict your score will be only 10 more than usual, or perhaps better!
The point I am making is that with backpacker fishing you have to compromise! Don’t worry that you have to leave behind your favorite expensive fly rod or best spinning rod. You are allowed only one rod and it must do everything! You need a “backpacker rod” that will cope with all types of fishing and will pack away to almost nothing.
When traveling I carry a 7 foot, 5 piece, carbon fiber rod (Snake River model by Shakespeare) which is fine for both fly fishing and spin fishing, as it has a reversible handle. It takes a weight #7 fly line, preferably a floating one or slow sinker. You need a matching fly reel and spinning reel to go with it. With this outfit you can cope with almost all eventualities.
So far so good. What else? You can’t take any waders. You have to wade wet. Wear shorts and old gym shoes. And no landing net. You must learn to beach your fish or pick it up by the gills.
It is a great advantage in being able to both fly and spin fish on a river or lake during one fishing excursion. Small streams may favor the fly rod approach but rivers and lakes favor a combination of both techniques, depending on the terrain and other factors. For example, many of the crystal clear rivers that flow out of the lakes in the Chilean Lake District seem at first glance to be wonderful for fly fishing. Actually, on closer analysis you would be lucky to be able to fish 10 % of the river with a fly rod from the banks or by wading, due to the presence of willows and marshes. But with a spinning rod you could cover 50% of the river by flicking out a lure or bait from under the trees, thus fishing a much greater area than is possible with a fly rod. Even then there are still plenty of safe havens left for the fish.
The local Chileans are experts at catching trout on these rivers using a hand caster to throw out a metal lure, or a gobbet of worms. If you are a wealthy tourist angler you could hire a botero and row boat and float down the river and so use your fly rod successfully, but it may cost you $100 or more for a day’s outing. I find it more challenging and satisfying to catch a trout from the riverbank for free.
On lake or loch fishing frequently you find the wily brown trout surface feeding just tantalizingly out of range of a fly rod cast! A few times I have had success in reaching them using my rod in spin fishing mode to cast out a bubble float with a dry fly or nymph attached to a fine leader (1).
I have yet to use my backpacker rod in the famous Taupo rainbow trout fishery in New Zealand, and wonder whether such a short fly rod (7 feet) would be able to cope with the arduous conditions of the Tongariro River. Previously I had all the appropriate gear. Here are some more tips and observations from this region.
NZ fisheries management is by DOC (Department of Conservation) and by and large this is very sensible. The Central North Island Taupo region fishery has a high local and tourist fishing pressure for predominantly rainbow trout, with a minimum size of 45 cm (18 inches) and a 3 fish bag limit. Rivers and river mouths in the lake are fly only (fly rod fishing of artificial and natural flies), with restrictions on fly size and number. No bait fishing is permitted. The boat and spin fisherman on Lake Taupo must be content with lures trailing only a single hook, so no treble hooks are allowed. Outside of the Taupo Fishery these restrictions do not apply and traditional brown trout fishing methods using fly, spinner and bait are the norm in the District Fisheries of both the North and South Islands.
These regulations are sensible and not a problem to the innovative fly fisherman. To fish with a feathered lure on the Tongariro, the major Lake Taupo inflow river, you cast across and downstream, but you have to get depth and distance for success. In the old days (1970’s) you were not allowed to weight your fly or leader, so many anglers perfected the use of the “high density shooting head”. This is a very short high density fly line, quick sinking, and having a light woven nylon backing (non-kinking). This type of fishing, in principle, is the same as spin fishing using a fly rod. The entire short fly line is got into the air, and with as much oomph as possible, is let go flying into the distance trailing its light backing. Of course it must be already free to do so. This is achieved by having large loops of backing at your feet or floating on the water. I found it best to hold the loops in my mouth and remember to open my mouth when casting. Watch out if you have loose false teeth!
Nowadays you are permitted to weight your leader with split shot to help it sink so the need for using a high density shooting head to get depth has declined, although it is still useful to get that extra casting distance.
Very popular on Taupo rivers is to fish the nymph upstream and let it tumble down into a pool or favored holding spot for trout. The invention of nymph fishing by Skues (ca. 1910) on the chalk streams of England was a great innovation. Traditional nymph and dry fly fishing is done on Taupo rivers mainly in the summer to catch residual trout, which are sparse because most of the fish have retreated to Lake Taupo to feed and fatten up on smelt and koura. Nymph fishing is also popular in the rivers during winter but this winter nymph fishing bears no resemblance to that devised by Skues (2).
At Taupo the best time for river fishing is autumn and winter when you fish the spawning runs of the rainbow trout. The actual spawning grounds are the upper reaches of the rivers and these regions are closed to fishing over the winter months. So these fattened trout are not in the river to cavort around feeding on floating flies! These trout have sex on their minds and want to get to the safe haven of the spawning grounds as quickly as possible.
Did you know that rainbow trout can read notices written in English?
One winter when fishing the Tauranga-Taupo River I fished up to the large warning notice to anglers….it said … No Fishing Beyond this Point (during the winter months). Immediately beyond the notice the river was churning with hundreds of spawning rainbow trout. What an amazing sight! Down stream of the notice not a trout could be seen.
The winter nymph angler has shown ingenuity to get depth for his offering, since during the day the rainbow trout tend to rest up deep within pools pretending to be invisible. A popular winter nymph rig is a long leader having a bug-eye nymph trailing a fine leader with a little orange ball nymph. If an entomologist examined both these “nymph imitations” he would shake his head in disbelief. No such things exist in the real world. The bug-eye nymph, with its bulbous metal eyes, is quite heavy and acts an allowed weight to your leader. The orange nymph is simply a roe imitation which the trout will happily chomp on.
The idea of matching the hatch, or imitating some sunken fly or minnow, does not universally apply, at Taupo, or elsewhere! Trout are territorial creatures and will snap at anything that annoys them. One of my fishing mates boasts that to prove this point he once caught a rainbow trout on a toothbrush with a hook attached.
When spin fishing with a toby on the Otaki River in New Zealand I caught a nice 2 lb brown trout and was amazed to find that stuck in its gullet was a 4 inch long torrent fish! This trout wasn’t looking for food but was annoyed at being harassed by a metal lure when having dinner.
Many fly fishermen do not understand the distinction between a wet fly (sunken insect imitation) and a feathered lure, nor between passive and aggressive fly fishing. Passive fly fishing, or fishing on the drift an imitation of a floating or sunk fly or nymph, developed on the Utopian chalk streams of England, to fool the wily brown trout looking for a feed. This belief system worked well there but expand the system geographically, time wise and to other species, it is a pretty one-eyed concept to use for catching trout and salmon.
Viewing game fishing in the largest system possible, I find that trout behave much like human beings. True, they eat at certain times and are fussy about their diet, but their whole life doesn’t revolve around eating!
We human beings live (congregate) in towns and villages and move between them along set roadways. Humans display many emotions and have diverse behaviors. We can be curious, playful and sexy or old and grumpy! When young we are passive and easily frightened but on growing older we may become bold, aggressive and territorial. So too does the trout and salmon.
This broader view of trout behavior opens up a wider spectrum of ways to capture your trout, particularly when using a fly rod. Aggressive fly fishing is similar to spin fishing but uses a feathered lure to attract the trout. It doesn’t necessarily have to imitate anything; it can move around anywhere and contrary to the river flow (3). The trout may be curious or annoyed at this intrusion into its territorial waters. It thinks …perhaps its a minnow? I’ll grab it before my mate does. Or, what the hell’s that? I’ll biff it one before dozing off.
Trout fishing and fisheries management are like party politics and people management. Zealots and Utopias exist in both endeavors. Myth and religious dogma compete with scientific fisheries research and eventually this results in sensible regulations for our favorite sport. Individually, religious dogma can be ignored, or followed, according to taste.
In conclusion, what is important is that we can all go fishing and enjoy ourselves. To be successful and catch a trout anywhere, keep an open mind, use your common sense, be tolerant of other anglers’ belief systems, and be a responsible and innovative angler.
References: (1) “Threadline Fly Fishing for Trout and Sea Trout” by Alexander Wanless: (ca.1950) Herbert Jenkins
(2) “Nymph Fishing for Chalk Stream Trout” by G.E.M. Skues; (1939) London:A.C. Black
(3) “Complete Book of Fly Fishing” by Joe Brooks: (1958) Outdoor Life.
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