reviews

New Zealand Trophy Waters

By Scott Richmond

New Zealand Trophy Waters, by Bruce Mason. 118 minutes video. Can be purchased online at www.fishingvideo.co.nz for 40 New Zealand dollars plus 14 NZD for shipping. They can also be rented at some fly shops.

few years ago, I made a trip to Key West, Florida, for my first tarpon experience (see Fly Fishing for Tarpon in Key West). To prepare for that trip, I rented a Billy Pate video on tarpon fishing. I watched the tape four times. When I arrived in Key West, I was as prepared as I could have been for the trip. I jumped three tarpon and landed one 90-pounder.

A friend who accompanied me did not have time to watch any videos or prepare his thoughts and skills. He didn't have a hookup.

Good luck happens to those who are prepared. When you're headed for a new angling experience, one of the best ways to put yourself in the path of Lady Luck is to watch a video that shows you what to expect. It gets your head into the right context. You pick up subtle tips. When you're on the water, you can focus your thoughts, rather than have your mind all atwitter after a barrage of new sights and tactics.

Even if you're not headed for foreign climes, a video can expose you to angling tactics or fly patterns that might help you on your home waters.

That's two good reasons to watch a fly fishing video. A third is that a well-done video is entertaining and beats the hell out of watching a re-run of Ally McBeel.

Two videos from New Zealand succeed on all three fronts: informative, locally useful, fun to watch.

New Zealand Trophy Waters, Volumes 2 and 3, are each about two hours long. In Volume 2, you travel to some spectacular South Island rivers where ace angler Robbie McPhee pulls an unseemly number of steelhead-sized brown trout from a small creek, then shows you how to tie his favorite flies. There's also a 24-minute casting tutorial by world champion Mike Weddell. The tape concludes with a sea-trout (anadromous brown trout) session.

Volume 3 takes you to different rivers (and a lake) in even more spectacular country for yet more huge browns and rainbows. And there's a caddis pupa pattern that looks so good I'm going to tie some up this week and try them on the Deschutes.

I've never been fly fishing in New Zealand, but I feel like these tapes showed me a bit about what to expect: spotting feeding fish in crystalline waters, sight-fishing to those trout, playing them in difficult conditions, and walking around in beautiful places while wearing long-johns and shorts.

If the American economy and stock market ever recover, New Zealand is high on my list of places to visit with a fly rod. These tapes, combined with a couple of others, would certainly get me in the right frame of mind. I'm comfortable that they would succeed on the first justification for watching fly fishing videos: preparation for a trip.

These tapes also succeed on the second point: they provide insights that are useful on your home rivers. I've already mentioned the casting and fly tying sections, but there's more. Watch how Robbie McPhee approaches trophy trout. He doesn't walk up bold as brass and start flinging a fly from 20 feet away. He positions himself where he can get a good drift, then he kneels in the grass 60 feet behind the trout or hides behind a boulder. He makes a minimum of false casts before dropping the fly in just the right place so the fish sees the fly, but not the line and leader. I've seen far too many fly anglers approach trout with the subtlety of a rutting rhinoceros; a little instruction from Robbie, and they'd catch a lot more fish.

And thirdly, these tapes succeed on the entertainment front. It's not just the scenery and big trout--I'm a lover of language and I enjoy hearing a different angling lexicon. It's a refreshing change to hear anglers speak of trout "mucking about" and "buggering off", or say "Crikey, that one sorted me out." (On my first visit to England, I asked my host what we were going to do. "We shall sit on a sponge and ledger crust for chub," he said. I had no idea what he was talking about.) Anyway, it's a lot more interesting than "Nice fish!", which is 50% of the dialog on some videos and TV shows.

I especially appreciated the videography on these tapes. You're shown where the trout is lying, then how the angler is positioned. You almost always see the trout take the fly. It's not like those shows you see on American TV, the ones where the camera shows the angler's hands (only) as he rares back on the rod and shouts, "Got 'im!" You know they took that shot later and edited it into the video. There's none of those scammy shenanigans on these tapes. It takes a master's touch to get a camera in the right place so you can see the fish, see the angler's approach, and witness the thrill of the take--all without spooking the seven-pound brown trout that's feeding in shallow water. My hat's off to Bruce Masson for a job well done.

For my taste, I would have liked to see a map of where each fishery is located, and hear more about the angler's tactics as he approaches each fish. I'm also not keen on seeing large fish lifted up by the tail, as I don't feel trout are built to withstand much of that. But these are personal preferences, and overall I have to rate these videos quite highly.

Bottom Line: Superb videography, good entertainment, and informative. Reviewer Rating: 5

Scott Richmond is Westfly's creator and Executive Director. He is the author of eight books on Oregon fly fishing, including Fishing Oregon's Deschutes River (second edition).

Uploaded 07/09/2003.

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