BENDER

Well. It's been a wee while since my last post, and I've caught a few fish since then. I reckon I'm about due, if not overdue, for an update. My only motivation for trying to get this done tonight is that come tomorrow morning after the desk jockeys have checked in for the work week they'll decide to either make something of the day or write it off. It's Monday, and there's equal potential to come out of the gate strong or coast into the week and pick up the slack at some point down the line. Somewhere along both of those timelines and diverging trajectories, sooner or later though, they'll get bored, pick up the key board, and start surfing. To those I know with desk jobs, I imagine you'll likely eventually mosey this way. I hope this post makes more people's day and/or week than it breaks, but I realize the potential for both of those outcomes.

Apparently, since you last heard from me I've accumulated an additional 3,000+ new photos, and up until last week I simply haven't had the time to sit down and go through them all to try and put together anything comprehensible. Thursday concluded a solid two-week fishing bender with a good buddy from the U.K., Lewis Hendrie, which was really just the tail end of a month-long fishing bender. Lewis is a guide in the U.K. and even fishes for the U.K. team in the international competition circuit when he's not trout bumming in New Zealand. We met through a mutual friend back in mid-March and have since fished together 26 of the past 35 days. There's too much ground to cover to bother with specifics, so I'm just gonna skip the foreplay and jump straight to the dirty stuff.

Fishing here,

Yielded this:

We then went here:

To a notoriously tough river that treated us exceptionally well, turning up gems like these:

Then we fished a really cool river full of awesome pocket water like this:

And caught lots of fish like these:

We found a primo campsite on this pool.

And watched this guy, among several others, feeding every morning when we woke up, and every night as we ourselves recouped from the day's efforts.

Then we fished here.

... but were informed shortly after our arrival that not only A) had the season been closed on that particular body of water for over a month now, but also that B) we were trespassing. She was rather nice about the whole thing really.

We continued south to here.

And I caught this: CHA-CHING!

A double-digit beauty that ate a small nymph on my 5th cast. The heavens opened up immediately afterwards and we sought shelter. When it cleared, this is the view we were greeted with:

A few hour jaunt further south brought us to a quiet lil town that's pretty central to heaps of badass fishing.

This was a nice little lake with more than a few brownies eager to eat dries.

This was a gin-clear river full of excitable rainbows.

 This river only gave up one fish each day we fished it.

This river is one where you go to test your mettle against picky fish. We did not find this so.

This creek was prettier than it was productive, but full of nice fish. They just fussy.

Well it's now late and I'm tired, and there's still more to go. So I'll leave you with a parting shot and hopefully be back to it sooner than later. 

To be continued...