MOHAKA TRIP May 2002 By Russell Jennings

Forget the fishing, the real competition was on Saturday night. After dinner and a couple of drinks, someone spied some table tennis bats . It was rather amusing to watch, until it was my turn for a game of course . But that was just as funny, to all that was playing and watching.

It is that sort of interaction, that happens regularly on club trips, that you don't normally see nor hear about, and you thought I went along for the fishing.

About that, there were definitely some fish caught . I made the comment that it wasn't really fair to be on your first trip here, and to have the water so low and clear . Having done this trip for a few years, you get to see the river in a few moods, clearing after a flood, rising after rain and completely un-fishable.

I am not sure of exact numbers caught on the trip, but thinking it would be hard fishing, was not too far from the truth . However some anglers on the trip caught their largest ever fish, and then one went and caught a bigger one still on Sunday, congratulations to Ken Morse.

Having fished different parts of the river you get a few favourite spots, but with the low water, it enabled you to get to new areas not otherwise accessible, so we explored, but we found some fantastic water not far from where we were staying, and also where we had not been to on previous trips.

Nymphing was the most productive, and thank you to Derek who had caught a rainbow of 5 lb who said to me,” go up in front and see how you go “ .Well the next thing “it’s only a small - hang on a minute (well that’s not exactly what I said) but you get the picture . Anyway I didn't land the fish , because a few moments before I had landed one and didn't retie the fly, which was a valuable reminder to not just check the knot but it will take less than a minute to snip the line and retie the fly, because we did several times between us in this one pool, not too sure but we may have landed 7 or 8 and dropped a few more, all of which seemed to be different fish.