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There are some misconceptions about the famous Mohaka river. The first view most anglers get of this Hawkes Bay river is the fleeting glance down from the lofty heights of the Napier-Taupo Road bridge. The first impression is BIG (and it is) but down at river level it looks a lot different.
It does not pay to fish this river using only big river techniques. I've been fortunate to have been tutored on how to fish the Mohaka by my good Napier fishing mate, Roy. The first lesson came on a warm day in March many years ago. Roy and I had set out early from Napier on a glorious autumn Tuesday. We usually managed to sneak off work for one day midweek and in those days, you were pretty well-assured of having the river to yourself. Roy's favourite stretch of the river is around the Pakaututu Bridge up the Puketitiri road. There is one and a half hours of windy road up to Pakaututu and usually Roy has a touch of travel sickness by the time we reach the bridge. For years he blamed this on my driving, but it later turned out that it was caused by a balance deficiency easily remedied by wearing a patch behind his ear. After enduring the usual moans about my driving, we rigged up by the river. We had to use our mid-weight gear as there was a strong westerly blowing down the river. "So, what do I put on?" I asked, "Something pretty heavy?" eyeing the large pool upstream from the bridge. "No, definitely not," replied Roy, "You want to be fishing the edges, so put on a lightly-weighted size14 Hare 'n' Copper." Bowing to his superior local knowledge, I put on one of my own flies, a Flashback Hare 'n' Copper that I had recently 'invented'. It was a cross between the standard Hare and Copper but I'd pinched the idea of a flashback from Frank Harwood's Flashback Halfback nymph. For the 'flash' I had used pearl mylar strands that I had got from a mail order fly-tying materials' house in the States. The idea of the flash was originally attributed to Jim Ring who received several mentions in Tony Orman's classic 'Trout on the Nymph'. Jim had the theory that successful flies should incorporate an exaggerated trigger to make your fly stand out from normal. From memory, he termed this a 'super emerger' and the flash was to represent the air bubble used by the emerging insect to rise to the surface. I had decided to incorporate that idea on the most successful of fast water flies - the Hare 'n' Copper. The other innovation that proved very successful with this fly was the use of dark coloured hare underbody to form the bulky thorax of the fly. The theory here was that hatching nymphs have a dark, prominent thorax when they are about to hatch. This variant always out-performed the lighter-coloured thorax and many of my angling mates switched to tying their Hare 'n' Coppers in this fashion. Roy of course did not bother - he just traded me for supplies of my nymphs. So it was with some confidence that I fastened on this proven fly and got set to fish. "Probably best if you take this side and I'll go up the far side", suggested the local expert, "You can climb up that ridge and then get down to the river above the first pool." In those early days of fishing with Roy, I tended to trust his judgement so off I trotted up the river and climbed up the ridge above the first pool. My confidence in his directions was soon eroded when I looked down from above at his suggested route down to the river bank. This consisted of a loose scree slope leading into a forest of blackberry along the bank itself. As there was no obvious alternative, I launched myself at the descent. Half an hour later and various slides and slips, I was crawling through the blackberry on rough sheep tracks. Finally, I emerged at the riverside to find Rory fast into a fish on the other side of the river. "What happened? Did you get lost or something? You're wasting fishing time mucking about like that. I'm into my second fish already". I choked back a vitriolic rejoinder and disentangled my leader from the blackberry. "So where are they lying?" I asked the successful angler. "The browns will be along the edges in the shallow water and the rainbows will be in those riffly bits", advised my mate. "But those riffles look rather fast", I ventured, looking out at the fast flowing water in the middle of the wide river. "No, it's not as fast as it looks," said Roy, "There are rocks in the middle of the riffle and the fish can lie behind them sheltered from the flow". "Oh really," I said with only a touch of disbelief. Two rainbows later from 50 metres of riffle, I was contrite and acknowledged he was right. The browns proved a little more difficult as they lay in very shallow water, just out from the bank. It was hard to land the 7-weight line gently in the gusty wind and I scared two good fish halfway up the run. The next stretch up was very shallow at the edges, so I fished further out into the river where the water was around a metre deep. However, one cast was blown by the wind into the water just up from me about one metre from the edge and about 10cm deep. As I was about to retrieve the line from this poor cast, there was a swirl and the line stopped. I lifted the rod wondering what on earth was going on when a large brown threw itself out of the shallow water and landed with a huge splash. "Good fish!" admired Roy from across the river. And so it proved to be when I eventually landed a 6lb brown 15 minutes later at the tail of the pool below. I just could not credit how shallow that brown was lying. I had not spotted her as I was concentrating on the water further out thinking there was no chance of a fish that close to the water's edge. I reckon her dorsal fin must have just about been sticking out of the water had I only looked in the right direction. It was a lesson I have never forgotten and I now always study the shallow waters before fishing deeper. I think it was Jim Sierpinski of 'Hairy Dog' fame that always advised 'fish your feet first'. He was talking about stream mouth fishing but the advice is also very relevant to river fishing. Jim proved his point one night by catching a fish just about between the legs of a wading angler in front of him! Roy and I continued upstream, fishing our respective sides but there were no more takers up that long run. I crossed over at the wide tail of the next pool as Roy said that was the last safe crossing before I ran into more cliffs on my side. "How come I got the scree slope and the blackberry and you got a pool full of fish?" I inquired with as much grace as I could muster. "Gee! Is there blackberry there now?" came the grinning reply. "There was nothing like that last time I went down there." "And how long ago was that?" I asked. "Oh, I guess it must be 10 or 15 years ago now — amazing how that stuff grows!" I could see I was not going to get a hint of an apology so I soldiered onto the next pool. This had heavy rapids at the head and the strong flow had carved out a very deep pool with fast water on the far side. It would have been good fishing with a spinner but not with a fly. However, as I edged along the unstable bank, I spotted a good fish holding about two metres deep at the edge of the main flow. Roy came up beside me and I pointed out the fish. "You'll need a bit of weight to get the fly down to him in a hurry", suggested Roy. "Well I wasn't going to put on a size 18, smartass", I rejoined. "Yeah, well, it might be time to drag out your Tongariro bombs", said Roy. I dug out the flybox and scrounged around for a heavy nymph. I found a Halfback Bugeye that looked the goods and knotted that on with the Hare 'n' Copper tied to its bend. In went the whole rig with the usual Tongariro open loop cast. It's always easy to tell a fisherman that fishes that river a lot — they all duck as they cast! Anyway, the rig plonked into the heavy water just below the rapids and sank quickly. As the fly neared the fish, I was trying to decide if it was best to watch the fish or the indicator when Roy screamed "Strike!" He had seen the fish move over and take the nymph while the indicator 3.5 m above had not begun to move. Another lesson — when you can see the fish, don't worry what the indicator is doing. By the time it moves, the fish may have spat out the fly. Fortunately the scream in my right ear galvanised me into action and I struck hard, knowing I would have to move the fly quickly to overcome the length of the leader in the strong current. It turned out that the excess of Irish coffees the night before had not slowed the reflexes too much and a solid strike was made. Off raced the rainbow with me in hot pursuit. My concentration was not aided by the running commentary from my mate such as: "Stop playing with him, you wimp!" and, "C'mon, we haven’t got all day!" Even with such incentives, it took another 20 minutes before a beautiful eight-pounder lay flapping in the stones. "Just a pygmy!" said Roy derisively, "I'd hate to see how you'd get on with a decent-sized fish". Well as it happened that fish was the best of the day and typical of what this great river can produce. Certainly it is not as pleasant fishing with a heavily-weighted fly, but there are occasions on the Mohaka when you have to get 'down and dirty'. We especially noted this in the winter months when a cold southerley was blowing. In those conditions, the fish were all lying deep in the pools and you had to fish heavy or go home empty-handed. So a bit wiser and somewhat wearier, a few hours later we made our way back to the van. It had been a good day and hopefully Roy would be too tired to whinge about my cornering all the way home.
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