Following the recent one-two punch of Hugo Pearce and Ollie Bassett, both a product of New Zealand’s Youth System, at the River Finals recently, it was a similar theme at the Lake Final at the weekend, albeit with the addition of some other nations’ top young anglers.

Fished on the prolific Lake Aniwhenua, the first three hour session got off to a blistering start with Hugo sharing his boat with USA World Youth Team champion angler Noah Shapiro, currently on a three-year course at Waikato University, and them bringing an astonishing forty-five fish to the measuring tray between them. Noah’s twenty-four, in fact, set a new venue record.

In the second session, Noah delivered a similar result to finish the day with a perfect two place points score, followed by England International Charlie Abrahams who had overcome a boat failure incident to be within touching distance at the end of day one and South African Youth Team member Nathan Pollard who always seems to do well on this venue.

Last year’s champion, Ollie Bassett, appeared to be too far back to make an impression but delivered a masterful second day with two twenty plus scores, including one that matched Noah’s record, making it a very tight finish.

In the end, Noah had done enough to take his first title in New Zealand and Nathan completed the podium in an event that was dominated by indicator nymphing with chenille worms – this sounds like a simple method but turned out to be extremely technical, with depth, presentation and fine line all key ingredients for success.

Suzie Foggo followed up her position as top female angler at the Rivers with the same position in this event.
The biggest fish was a terrific 61cms rainbow taken by Noah on the very last cast on the competition.

The newly crowned Champion commented “I am so excited to have won such a huge competition in New Zealand and it was great to be on the podium with my good friends Ollie and Polly. I would like to start by thanking all of the SFFNZ community who have helped me acclimatise here, taken me fishing and shown me the venues –

I have learnt so much. Special thanks to the Bassett, Pearce and Pollard families who have homed and fed me, particularly Paul who made sure I was well looked after even while scoring the event this weekend. The first session with Hugo Pearce was actually where the real insight happened, as we were catching well stripping, but counting down quite a long way and getting a lot of action on the drop so, about halfway through, I decided to try plonking for the static presentation. I set up with a chenille worm at a little over two metres and a chironomid halfway down and it was very clear the point fly was taking the majority of the fish, so I went to two worms and caught even more. I was using 0.12/6x tippet and that also proved crucial – in subsequent sessions I had boat partners who set up the same way but were fishing thicker line and they just did not get takes in the same numbers. Obviously, using a seven weight rod, I had to strike and play fish carefully, but I actually broke off on very few.

In the last session, my performance dipped as I did not realise the fish had come up as the conditions changed, and so a shallower rig would probably have done better. A big shout out to my boat captains for taking me to fish and, finally, I would like to thank Peter Scott of Hanak for supporting this terrific event.”

Championship organiser, Billy Thrupp, said “I was delighted with how well Lake Aniwhenua fished, it is a brilliant venue with a real mixture of fish sizes and types of water. The younger anglers demonstrated how well they have developed stillwater indicator nymphing and showed just how devastating a method this can be in the right hands. I would like to thank Hanak for their support again with the prizes for both our Finals and all the anglers who have participated throughout an excellent year of competitive angling. Also, a big shout out to Paul Bassett for giving up his weekend to manage the scoring which was completed very quickly after each session.”

 

Sport Fly Fishing New Zealand would like to thank Eastern Fish & Game for the use of the venue. and Hanak New Zealand for sponsoring the event.