A Trout As Big As The Ritz
THE instructions were cryptic, and whispered, which made them impossible to ignore: ”Little to the left, righto, righto . . . ,” followed by, ”Cast again.”
That was what our guide, Craig Aspinall, was telling us from his vantage on the bank of the Kaipo River in New Zealand as my wife, Lindy, and I stood midstream and cast to a trout as big as a piece of firewood. The fish was active and not yet ”suspicious,” as Craig would say of spooked fish.
The water was so clear that you could see it sucking stonefly nymphs off the bottom with the easy grace of a natural athlete. After several casts, I laid the fly in the right place and three runs, two jumps and one whoop later, we had landed and released our first New Zealand brown trout.
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