For the TRM anglers’ fishy story this week – we will spoil you with two!

Fishy Story No. 1:

The photos above are two TRM fishing buddies – Evan Bramwell under his special leather hat & John Finlay from Rothesay Bay on Auckland’s North Shore.  (This is unusual in itself as neither are from South Africa?)

Any way, the first story from Evan is that he was fishing in the Bain Pool in September 2014 when he lost this favourite hat during a gigantic struggle being dragged under by a huge trophy trout.  Well that’s what he claimed but he probably only slipped over.  For TRM fishy tales it looks a lot better if it was ‘lost in action’.  (We never let the facts ge tin the way of a good fishy story…) The Kangaroo leather cowboy hat was rather special as it was his favourite fishing hat – (not as prized as a  TRM hat of course?).

About 18 months later they were crossing over the shingle river bed down river a further 3-400 meters near the Log Pool and – you guessed it already – his fishing buddy found it full of gravel in the river bed.  This just goes to prove trout do not eat Kangaroos….  As you can see the hat recovered well after such a wash.

Fishy story No 2:

Above is John Finlay arriving back from Major Jones Pool on Saturday morning with his (usual?) limit bag.  I know you can’t see it but he really is smiling… a very satisfied grin…

A few years back John arrived at the same car park at the end of Koura Street planning to head for the Major Jones pool across the swing bridge early – about 6 am – on a cold pitch black moonless morning.  Using the street light he assembled his gear with his point fly being a large black woolly bugger.  Just as moved off he felt his first ‘take’.  An owl had swooped down out of the surrounding trees to take the woolly bugger and tried to fly off with it.

So John managed his first ‘catch & release’ before he had even left the car park.