Shorelines: Don't leave us dangling

By COLIN MOORE

John Giacon teaches people how to throw a small feather up to 30m. Impossible? Not when you use a fly rod and fly line and learn the venerable art of fly-fishing.

Giacon has been active in fishing clubs and lobby groups, is a founder of the New Zealand chapter of Trout Unlimited, which cleans up polluted and overgrown trout rivers and lakes, and is a pioneer in using fly-fishing techniques to catch saltwater fish.

He has taught hundreds of people to tie feathers so they look like fish food, cast them and catch fish.

I join Giacon, his wife, Leith, and six other students at a three-day introduction to fly-fishing course at the Rangitaiki River Lodge in Murupara, site of the New Zealand flycasting championships at Queen's Birthday next year.

Giacon begins with a table loaded with the tools of the art and an explanation on how a virtually weightless feather, or fly, can possibly be cast many metres. Conventional fishing technique uses a weight, the sinker, to pull a fishing line behind it. With fly-fishing the line has some weight, so it can be cast like a cowboy's lasso, and take the feather lure with it.

You can't use a sinker if you want to land an imitation of a tiny insect so delicately that it doesn't break the surface film of the water.

Without a sinker there is a more direct connection between hooked fish and angler, so that playing a fish tends to be more exciting. Fish are usually lightly hooked and so when caught can be easily released to fight another day.

Giacon explains the use of different types of lines and rods and shows that the contents of his fishing jacket include such essentials as insect repellent and a whistle, the angler's SOS.

American Doug Swisher has taken much of the mystery out of fly-fishing. He is a regular visitor to New Zealand for the annual International Saltfly Tournament, which Giacon organises in the Bay of Islands. Swisher also runs flycasting clinics and his instructional videos are renowned.

We go on to the lodge back lawn to try the Swisher technique. After a couple of hours there are some dejected students who wonder if they will ever master this art. Giacon explains patiently what they are doing wrong.



Next day we head off to a small lake where we can cast from the shore for real fish. We don't catch any, but the looks of dejection are beginning to disappear.

That night we get our flycasting graduation certificates, a box of ties that Leith Giacon has tied, and an embroidered hat and polo shirt. Amazingly, I win a prize for the longest cast, which would never have been possible two days earlier.

The weekend is not over, however, because on day three we try our new skills on the famed Rangitaiki River under the guidance of Graeme Ryder of Lake Aniwhenua Lodge.

The walls of Ryder's lakeside lodge are covered in photographs of some of the legendary giant trout he has helped clients to take out of the lake.

But we are on the river to learn how to fish with a lure that looks like a nymph tumbling naturally along the bottom of a river. Ryder suggests where to cast while Giacon gives quiet coaching on technique.

This is a wild fishery and there are a lot of fingerlings in the river. I manage to catch - and release - the smallest trout I have ever caught, but there is more action further down river.

One woman who despaired on day one that she would ever get the hang of it, has hooked into a nice fish. The trout breaks the surface and she plays it with aplomb until, just before Giacon has it safely in a landing net, it makes one final lunge for freedom and manages to get off the hook.



At the end of January the Giacons are running a women-only introduction to fly-fishing course at the Rangitaiki Lodge with the intention of getting fishing widows off the river banks and on to the rivers and lakes with their partners.

* Fifth Air New Zealand Saltfly, April 10 to 14

* Women-only course, Rangitaiki River Lodge, January 18 to 20, 2002, $895 all inclusive.

* Doug Swisher clinics March 9, Auckland; March 22 24, Rangitaiki River Lodge.

Trout Guides

Fly Fishing Lodge

* colinmoore@xtra.co.nz