The places in New Zealand best known for trout fishing tend to be picture-postcard. Big trout in gin-clear water. Worth the trip. Inland often.
Less appreciated, but also very good, are the lowland waters. They run from small tributaries up into larger river networks. They also reach the coast and tidal fisheries.
Through autumn, winter, spring and summer, these areas can have an agribusiness-is-everything vibe. Farmers tend to be supportive of fishing. Views differ, but access still often holds up. Given how much rain New Zealand gets, the flows wash through, and the trout fishing is good.
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It’s been very interesting. This week I’ve been going through some Zoom videos with Nick and I have to say I think my teaching can be more focused/structured!! That’s been extremely useful actually. Recently my one-hour lessons have been going on for considerably longer, which is fine and my choice; I like the company! But that’s no good for duplication. So what I need to do is to drive the content back into one hour, imaginary bells and whistles, and then have the fishing chats after this tightly focused hour.
I think that will be better. It will also be more practical for my students when replaying the lessons back to extract the drills, exercises and cues.
I knew that working with Nick was going to improve my coaching/lessons. It was a bit unexpected to see this so quickly. It does make sense to check our work on a regular basis, and having a complete video of the lesson makes this possible. (Another good reason to record lessons!).
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Strange morning at the beach. I saw things I’d never seen before, possibly due to the big grunion run last night. Full moon. Big tide. I saw dark tails in close. I felt I must be hallucinating or that they were big globs of kelp rolling in the gentle surf. But I don’t think so. They definitely looked like tails but seemed attached to fish larger than I’m accustomed to seeing on our beaches and were moving parallel to the beach in opposition to the currents. They were up and down for a half hour or so and then disappeared. Could have been sharks or guitar fish, I suppose, or maybe white sea bass? Also the beach was littered with strange transparent three-lobed potato-chip looking things (see photo). Turns out they’re the chitinous sails of valella valella, “by the wind sailors,” a colony of specialized organisms comprising a far offshore sea-jelly that sometimes washes ashore in SoCal. The beds of big egg-bearing sand crabs weren’t on my beach yet even though I heard they were found on some beaches further south. I didn’t see any corbina nosing into the swash but there were some corbina-like swirls 30 feet out. The light was bad so I couldn’t see much below the surface. I saw a cormorant cruising in the same zone fishing, coming up with several silvery 6” long grunion which must have been packed in close. I caught a couple of small barred surf perch casting among them. I need to go back out there to try again. Probably Monday.
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I just saw a post from a physio mentioning that hotter weather means that some people get problems with swollen feet and legs. This made me think of white mans feet that happens in the jungle. The temperatur shift when going to the jungle is a bit more extreme so the people experience it here in Sweden during spring but the solution could work for both cases. The reason being that fluids cannot be transported away efficiently and the solution suggested is to strengthen the calves.
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It is only one month before fishing season really starts here. May is long month, especially if there is no change for ice fishing like now. You can't do farm work as groung has frost and growing season hasn't start yet.
It is just waiting summer to come. Four years ago we had flights to Malaysia and we were getting ready for that. Two years ago we were already in Malaysia and spent this nonsense month there.
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