New Year, New Trick, New Zealand

In the week leading up to my Alaskan trip last summer this blog received a post per day, leaving no doubt for anyone actually reading that the blogger was excited about his trip. "I'm going fishing in Alaska! I have a PERFECT two-week plan!" It wasn't so much a need to shout this out to readers, but rather just a strong need to vent it -- the excitement was bubbling over and leaving accumulated gasses in all corners of my consciousness, bored to tears as it was with my normal daily life. Writing was a healthy distraction.

So why haven't I written a whisper about the two months of careful, engrossing planning for the upcoming trip to New Zealand? Certainly, I have been obsessing on this trip in the usual way. Trip planning may be my own particular geeky specialty, like entomology and "the fascination of what's difficult" can be for other fly fishing geeks. Taking GPS waypoints from Google Earth, trolling around on bulletin boards for tips, reading and re-reading available books and articles -- I do my homework when it comes to trip planning, and, far from treating it like a chore, I enjoy the hell out of it. The planning process stimulates the mind and the imagination. When the process is finished, the product is a thing of beauty: a logical plan for navigating the landscape (and waterscape) backed up with the right gear to get it done and the best possible information on tactics to help join fly to fish.

Needless to say, the satisfaction in executing such a plan is only exceeded by completely and totally changing it on the spur of the moment, should that be your whim once you are on the ground, and especially if you are the type of person disinclined to obey authorities (particularly your despotic self).

          untaught to submit
His thoughts to others, though his soul was quell'd
In youth by his own thoughts; still uncompell'd,
He would not yield dominion of his mind
To spirits against whom his own rebell'd;
Proud though in desolation; which could find
A life within itself, to breathe without mankind.

OK, that's a bit of a stretch, but if you have even the remotest opportunity to quote Byron before heading on any journey, you take it!

Anyway -- I'm going fishing in New Zealand! I have a PERFECT four-week plan!!!

Or to be honest, I think it is a good plan. The difference between New Zealand and Alaska or Patagonia for me, is that I'm a complete virgin. When I toss a six-weight line out on to the Hope River in about two weeks, it will be the first time I have fished a Kiwi stream. So, despite an avalanche of good information from friends, books, websites, videos, and kind strangers on bulletin boards, it is pretty much an unknown quantity. For this reason, The Plan is more likely than ever to be broken up and rearranged. Instead of going straight to the Hope/Hurunui area around Lewis Pass (though my bus ticket is already reserved), I may go to St. Arnaud and check out the Travers and Sabine rivers. Or, hell, I might even end up walking down the Hollyford first -- it's all the way at the other end of the island, but it is the easiest trek, and might do well for a warmup. What then if my 43-year old feet or knees or back start acting up at just the wrong time? Then I'm looking a whole different, non-"tramping" (read, backpacking) trip, and the rivers change to road-accessible names like the Clarence, the Mataura, the Grey.


Four weeks seemed to be about the right window for working out these kinds of questions. I may end up wishing I had more time, and/or wishing I had brought my portable sea kayak, or inflatable river kayak, or both. But I figure I need to get the lay of the land over there before making any really gigantic plans. It's important to find out first whether New Zealand is the right place for gigantic plans -- and if you have watched the hobbit movies, you suspect that the answer is yes. I know a few fly fishers who rave pretty hard about New Zealand. In Patagonia, I fished for sea-run browns with a Swedish kook who insisted that I HAD to go try New Zealand at some point. To Ole, New Zealand was mandatory for a traveling fly fisher. I have resisted it partly because I wonder if I am up to the technical challenge of fishing for notoriously spooky browns, and whether I have the patience to walk along sight-fishing and only making perhaps a dozen casts a day, always to visible fish. But a fly fisher reaches a threshold of age where patience and skill may be adequate, and beyond which, legs, lungs and back may soon be inadequate for the task . . . .

So with that in mind, I finally quit my full-time job and got the ticket for this trip. Several months ago I moved to a terrific apartment with cheap rent (helpful for taking long trips) and then over the past six weeks have unwound my full time technical writing work (essential for taking a long trip) with a certain share of anxiety and uncertainty, and so things have been busy. The next Friday coming up will be my last work day, and the Sunday following gets me on a plane that goes over the date line and lands two days later. What I actually see or do after that, what I actually catch or (likely enough) do not catch, will be the topic of some blogging from Down Under!