New Zealand Ladies Fly Fishing Team off to USA

Sarah Delany with rainbow trout on the Mohaka River. Photo / Chris Pritt

Lesley Hosking can laugh at how her piscatorial pastime has turned into fishing fanaticism.

“I was a recreational angler for a long time and then I met these girls and my whole life changed, now I own 12 rods instead of two.”

The ‘girls’ Hosking is referring to are her fellow team members in the New Zealand Ladies Fly Fishing Team – three of whom, Sarah Delany, Louise Stuart and team manager Christine Pritt come from the Taupō area.

Along with team captain Rachel McNae, reserve Ivy Morrison, both from Hamilton, and Suzie Foggo from Tauranga, the Taupō anglers will be heading to the 4th FIPS-Mouche* World Ladies Fly Fishing Championship in Idaho Falls, United States of America in July.

“Five days of competition, and we do three hours each day on one particular venue,” said Hosking.

These are the Warm River, Grey River and the Henry Fork River as well as Hebgen Lake and the private Sheridan Lake.

The team will head to the USA 10 days prior to the competition which runs July 12-19 to get a feel for the local conditions, consult with guides and put in some practice on similar waterbodies – though they are not allowed to fish the competition waters in advance.

“We will be fishing in three states – Idaho, Montana and Wyoming – in the corner where the three states intersect,” said Pritt who as manager is appreciative that the national body, Sports Fly Fishing New Zealand, is contributing $10,000 for the trip.

“But such are costs that it is really self-funded.”

Team members are probably having to come up with about 90 per cent of the money themselves, to cover airfares, accommodation, gear, entry fees, guides, transport and food, Pritt said.

All in pursuit of the elusive rainbow and brown trout, which New Zealand anglers will be familiar with, but also cutthroat trout, grayling and whitefish.

‘Counting’ fish must be over 20cm in length and the longer they are, the more points they yield.

Delany, back from a successful trip to the Mohaka River with Pritt and Hosking the day before our interview, noted however that at the championships, aiming for quantity generally trumped trying to reel in a trophy.

“Usually in the competitions we want smaller fish which are easier to land and get out quickly. That one took ages to land,” she said referring to a photo. “You could easily bust off and have to redo all your gear. Bigger ones are good if you land them but in a competition that’s high risk, high reward.”

As Stuart, a fishing guide in Turangi, recounted a tale of a ‘disastrous’ morning when she knocked a beautiful probably 10-pound brown trout off her fishing buddy’s line while trying to net it too early and feeling it necessary to suggest she start walking home there and then, it’s obvious the team is not short on camaraderie or humour.

But with a competitive edge.

“We’re all trying to do the best,” said Hosking, “and trying to get our team members to do the best as well, it’s a real team effort. At nighttime… we will sit around a dining room table and all be tying flies. We’ll have a list of flies – ‘right this worked today, we need some of those’. ‘This worked last week right you make 20 of those, and you make 10 of those’ so we’re all tying flies and yapping.”

Teams can use commercially produced flies, but in competition all must be barbless. The New Zealand team predominantly use ones they have tied themselves which means having to take their own fly-tying equipment along with all their other gear.

A fact that spurs more stories.

Pritt: “In Canada last time when we got to the airport customs took every rod out of the plumbing tube we had them in. Each rod’s in four sections, they looked down every tube, swabbed some for gunpowder or drugs. It was such a big hoo ha.”

Hosking: “And when we come back, they will want to check our gear and clothes for didymo and weed.”

Though as keen anglers they realise the importance of the biosecurity checks.

Expectations were non-existent for that first trip in 2023, Pritt said, but the team managed a creditable eighth out of 10 teams.

Now, said Hosking, they were older and a bit wiser.

And expectations this time?

“A podium finish. The captain wants a podium finish, or in the top half,” she said.

The NZ Ladies Fly Fishing team, from eft; Louise Stuart, Lesley Hosking, Sarah Delany, Christine Pritt.

Deflated only slightly by Delany: “That is podium, there are only six teams, so far, that I know of. As of two weeks ago.”

However many teams enter, being one of the few coming from the southern hemisphere means the ladies can take advantage of their ability to fish up until the day they head off.

“It’s good that we’ve got our summer to prepare,” said Delany. “Because now it’s minus 13 degrees Celsius w

here we are going to fish, so they are not practising. We’re going summer to summer, we can fish right up to when we leave and they’re up there cutting holes in the ice… There’s no way they can fish.”

Competitive fishing had taken their angling interest to a whole new level, said Delany.

“The challenge of it because you get given a piece of water you might not know how to fish… if you went to your favourite spot, you’d always catch fish but here we’re forced to learn. ‘How do I fish that shallow bit or that deep bit?’ It’s all different techniques… We don’t know what we’re going to get in the States.”

For those in the know most of the women competing will be euro nymphing – a short line nymphing method that uses very thin leaders and tippets, weighted flies, and a piece of coloured line known as a sighter.

Stuart: “The whole thing about all of this (competition) fishing is getting your flies down as quick as you can so you have a longer drift. One fly is so much more difficult because there is less weight.”

And casting is described as more of a flick.

“It’s a graceful movement, think of a metronome, it’s rhythm.”

In the two lakes they will be sitting in boats, with three members of a different national side, loch-style fishing, drifting in a boat with a drogue, or sea-anchor, to slow the boat’s progress.

During the three-hour session the two teams in the boat have an hour and a half each to be the boss on board in terms of deciding where the boat goes – two from each team fish and the third acts as skipper and measurer.

The lake fishing, said Stuart, required another whole set of rods, reels, lines and flies.

“It’s completely different and you have to chop and change your brain around.”

Hosking: “And if it’s windy it’s chaos.”

*FIPS-Mouche (Fédération Internationale de Peche Sportive Mouche) is an International Sport Fly Fishing Federation, founded in 1989 in San Marino which aims to encourage sport fly fishing around the world.