Central South Island Weekly Fishing Report - 2 January 2025

Easy Spots to Have a Cast

Jayden Johns with yet another beauty from the canals.

Lake Opuha Has multiple access options, shore fishing and formed boat ramps at Bennets and Hays Roads.  The North and South Opuha rivers are the lake's main source of water and offer small river fishing options.

Lake Tekapo Trout and salmon fishing with breathtaking views of the Southern Alps.  Target the stream mouths.  Spin anglers should try casting silver lures like hex wobblers and ticers around 14 grams. 

Lake Hood A park-like lake offering great perch fishing and the chance to catch brown and rainbow trout. Just a quick detour from State Highway 1.

Tekapo Canal Roadside access and all legal methods are permitted.  It is renowned for its scenic setting and trophy trout.  The canal has brown and rainbow trout of all sizes, with many reaching over 4kg and a few over 15kg. 

Pūkaki Canal This Canal provides relaxing roadside access, and all legal methods are permitted. The canal supports brown and rainbow trout of all sizes, with many reaching over 4kg.  Occasionally, salmon are caught here too.

Looking For Somewhere Else to Fish?

Father, son team, Guy and Sam Gibson fly fish a small Mackenzie Basin lake.

 Click here for fishing tips, fishery information and downloadable brochures covering our popular fisheries.

Click here for our online access map, detailing hundreds of access spots throughout the region.

Catch – Bleed – Clean and Chill

Well prepared delicious salmon.

Sports fish are a special food resource – only sports fishing licence holders have the privilege of harvesting wild sports fish in freshwater.

Here are the four key steps we recommend for getting the absolute best flavour and flesh texture from your special catch.

Step 1 – after landing, dispatch your fish ASAP with a firm strike to the top of the head above its eyes with a rock or stick or an ‘iki’ spike to its brain.

Step 2 – Once dispatched, immediately bleed the fish by cutting from the bottom of its gills into its gills – when cut correctly, there will be a lot of blood loss.

Step 3 – when bleeding has ceased, remove the gills, stomach contents and kidneys (dark strips along the backbone in the gut cavity).

Step 4 – Chill fish ASAP. It's best done in a chilly bin with ice.  Alternatively, to keep it cool, you may need to bury it deep in cold-wetted sand or keep it in the river water in the shade of a tree, etc.

Catch and Release

CSI Fish & Game ranger Rhys Adams carefully displays a lovely brown trout in the water for a photo before releasing. Photo Evan Adams.

Taking a fish home for dinner is a fundamental part of sports fishing; however, there will be times, either by choice or by legal requirement, when you will release fish.

Careful catch and release is a skill you must learn to ensure any fish you intend to release doesn’t come to harm.

Here are our ‘Quick 5’ tips for handling fish with care: 

• Cool your hands and landing net by wetting them before touching the fish.
• Keep the fish in the water while removing the hook.
• Do not squeeze the fish, and never touch the gills.
• Photograph the fish in or over the water and make it quick - the fish should not be out of the water for more than 5 seconds.
• Revive the fish facing into the current long enough for it to regain its swimming strength.

In the unfortunate instance that a fish you intended to release does end up bleeding from the gills, so long as you can legally take that fish, you should keep it as part of your bag limit and utilise it. 

This short video demonstrates good fish handling skills, click here to view.

Booby Flies – Try Them Out

Booby flies come in various shapes and sizes.

If you haven’t tried fishing with a booby fly at the canals or other rainbow trout fisheries, then give it a crack this summer. Booby flies come in a few shapes and sizes but in general they resemble a woolly bugger fly with two big foam eyes.

A booby fly can be fished with dynamic movement and rainbow trout, in particular, seem to love attacking them.

The woolley bugger-style marabou tail proves and excellent ‘pulsing’ movement in the water imitating a swimming fish and the foam eyes make the fly float – and when sunken by a sinker or sinking line causes the fly to rise in the water column.

Fly anglers can fish booby flies on a sinking line and its best to use a relatively short leader.  Striping the fly in with long pauses will let it float up in the water.

This style of fly fishing is a great option when fishing steep drop-offs at river deltas – for example the Otematata River delta at Lake Aviemore.

One way spin anglers can fish a booby is on a rig currently used for egg rolling.  Use a three-way swivel with a short trace to a light sinker and a longer trace to the fly.  Either bounce it along with the flow – egg rolling style or cast and retrieve in a start-stop pulsing style. It’s even worth a try in a static bait fishing scenario.

With a suitable size heavy sinker, set the leader length to float the booby just above the weed beds, either in some current or in still water.  Give the booby some extra movement to attract a nearby trout by occasionally making a short-quick wind-in.

Go-To Baits

• Prawn and cocktail shrimp – these crustaceans would surely win the award for the most popular bait in the Mackenzie Basin canals.   Fish them whole or trim them to suit your hook size.
• Huhu grub - dig these insects out of a rotten log. They stay on the hook best if you hook them through the mouth.
• Anchovy - WARNING: any fish used for bait must be whole and intact.  If any portion of the fish is not intact, it cannot be used for bait.
• Scented soft baits – these come in all shapes, sizes and scents and can be fished in all sorts of ways.
• Worms – dig them up from your garden bed or, better yet, around a cattle yard.  A favourite of brown trout, incredibly successful when rivers are up in flow a little after a rain event.

Sea-Run Salmon Heads Up

Salmon anglers at dawn on the Rangitata mouth.

The peak months of the run are still ahead of us. With a slow start to the season due to constant high river levels making angling a challenge we’re hopeful the summer months will give anglers a better chance. Watch this video on how to assess river conditions for sea-run salmon angling.

The fundamental thing to remember when fishing for sea-run salmon in the Central South Island and North Canterbury regions is you must have a sea-run salmon licence.  Whole season licence holders can also purchase a $5 sea-sun salmon licence that is valid in the Central South Island and North Canterbury Fish & Game regions only.

With your sea-run salmon licence you will receive a salmon season bag limit card.  This card must be carried on you while fishing, along with a pen. Details of any kept sea-run salmon must be recorded immediately, in ink, on the card.

The sea-run salmon licence is a legal requirement for any angler who targets sea-run salmon.  This licence is also required by any angler who accidentally catches a salmon targeting other species like trout or kahawai and wants to keep the salmon. 

All the information you need to know can be found at our website here including how to purchase your sea-run salmon endorsement and to receive your season bag limit card.

For clarification contact our Temuka office: phone 03 6158400, email csi@fishandgame.org.nz

If you want to learn a bit about the science behind the adaptive salmon management in Canterbury, you can check out this video.

Fish Strandings

With the summer dry setting in fish strandings are a possibility.

If you report a fish stranding to us there are some key pieces of information we will need as we triage the urgency to attend versus other important work at hand.

1. Exact location.
2. How many live fish, their sizes, and species.
3. How deep the water is in the pools (we can only recover using electric fishing in knee deep or less).
4. Is there water flowing into the pool where they are stranded?

Contact us at our Temuka Office, phone - 03 615 8400 or email - csi@fishandgame.org.nz

A Timely Reminder- 2023/24 Season Ranging Report

During the 2023/24 season, that ended on the 30th of September 2024, Fish & Game rangers undertook their duties at 45 waterways across the Central South Island Fish & Game Region, interviewing 2,442 anglers. 107 people were found offending, accounting for a total of 120 offences.

To see the full report, click here.

Please remember to keep your licence on you while angling and if you haven’t already purchased a 24/25 licence do so, click here, or from your local licence agent in-store.

To learn the latest CSI Sports Fishing Regulations 2024/25, click here.

Weather and Water Outlook

• Keep a close eye on river and lake levels at Environment Canterbury’s River Flow Website here and rainfall website here.
• Outdoor Access NZ offer high quality live stream webcams of some of Canterbury’s favourite fishing spots. This is a subscription-based service, but they do offer a 30-day free trial.
• There are some great weather forecasting websites available, we use YR.NO and Metvuw

Notice Board

The Tekapo River receiving spilling flows from the Lake George Scott spillway weir. Photo Rhys Adams.

Tekapo / Takapō and Pūkaki River Spill Notice

 Due to the current high-water levels of lakes Pūkaki and Tekapo and regular ongoing rain events, Genesis and Meridian have notified Fish & Game that it is likely that spill flows will occur to the Pūkaki and Tekapo riverbeds over the holiday period.

Spill flows are extremely hazardous for riverbed travel, riverbed camping and fishing.

Take care when accessing river areas in case of flow changes - do not risk crossing any river on foot or in a vehicle if there is a risk of being inundated or stranded if levels rise.

Central South Island Fish & Game are now on Facebook and Instagram.

Search for csifishgame on Instagram and Central South Island Fish & Game on Facebook. Please like and follow us to keep right up to date with everything we’re up to at CSI Fish & Game.

Any questions are still best directed towards csi@fishandgame.org.nzor calling 03 615 8400.

Please remember to share your angling experiences with us, it helps make our reports more engaging and inspiring for everyone! Please email your reports to Jase, here.

Hook into it!

Jase, Fish and Game Officer
Central South Island Fish & Game