Revealing the Fishing Secrets of the South Island

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Mount Owen stoically pushes up through the fog and clouds of the Tasman District of the South Island of New Zealand, and at 1,875 meters (6,150 feet) above sea level is the highest peak in Kahurangi National Park. Its spectacular marble karst geology makes it a major draw for hikers, photographers, cavers, and scientists of all kinds. The marble’s surface is incredibly featured by erosion, with deep slots and trenches—some of them paper-thin fissures, others as wide as hallways. Where one slot ends, another begins nearby as though some giant dragon had raked and cut the stone.

It’s an otherworldly setting, so much so that scenes from The Lord of the Rings were filmed here. When Gandalf fell into the abyss with the Balrog, and the rest of the fellowship exited the mines of Moria into what Tolkien described as Dimrill Dale, they were actually on Mount Owen. And Mount Owen actually is riddled with underground caverns and mazes, including Bulmer Cavern, New Zealand’s longest cave system, which has been mapped and explored to depths of 50 miles.

The mountain and the name “Owen” have a circular historical connection. The mountain is named after English biologist Richard Owen, who studied the bones of extinct species and first coined the term “dinosaur” in 1841. While Owen was working with sculptor Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins, they eventually used fossilized bones as a framework and were the first to create sculptures of what dinosaurs might have looked like.

In 1839, Owen received a single 6-inch bone fragment from a muddy riverbank in New Zealand and from it deduced the existence of a massive flightless bird, larger than an ostrich. In scientific circles he was ridiculed for announcing a new species based on a single piece of evidence, but in 1843 Owen received a large consignment of bones from New Zealand and was able to prove he was correct.

From that single delivery he was able to reconstruct the complete skeleton of an entire extinct bird that was, in fact, even larger than an ostrich. He named it Dinornis novaezealandiae, or moa, borrowing the common name from a Māori phrase. The history of the moa, and its extinction through overhunting just 150 years after the arrival of humans, is one of New Zealand’s most poignant and illustrative stories about the fragile balance of nature.

In 1987, members of the New Zealand Speleological Society were exploring a cave system on Mount Owen when they found a dismembered dinosaur-like claw still intact, with flesh and scaly skin still on the bones. It was so well preserved they presumed the creature had only very recently died. After much publicity about the giant “Mount Owen claw,” and speculation that some wild, horrific creatures might still be roaming the highlands alive, the appendage was sent for analysis and was found to be the 3,300-year-old mummified foot of a moa. And it came from the bowels of a mountain named after the man who first discovered the species.

Owen River Lodge

If you follow the slopes of Mount Owen down to the south and east you’ll run into the bucolic Owen Valley, a fertile green lowland filled with pastures for cattle and sheep. The Owen River winds through this pastoral community until it reaches the Buller River and nearby intersects with Highway 6, which runs from Nelson to the West Coast and south along the Tasman Sea until it reaches Haast. Perhaps 20 property owners control the land in this river valley enclave, which is surrounded by Kahurangi National Park on the east, north, and west sides.

Twenty years ago Australian Felix Borenstein bought a rustic farmhouse on the river here, and christened it Owen River Lodge. He renovated and expanded the farmhouse, and added three riverside cottages—each with two private rooms—to accommodate six solo anglers or up to 12 anglers with shared accommodations.

Borenstein grew up as a city boy and ran his own IT business until the age of 42. So upon acquiring a fishing lodge, he had to learn how to grow vegetable gardens, do his own plumbing, maintain electric fences, wash windows, landscape, and maintain and train a professional guide and hospitality staff in a remote, rural environment with a small population pool. With creativity and a do-it-yourself attitude, Borenstein created an eco-sensible, comfortable lodge with a lounge, bar, veranda, outdoor hot tub, massage room, retail fly shop, two acres of vegetable gardens, and a mature botanical garden complete with picnic benches and a landing area for helicopters.

In time, the lodge he built would win the Condé Nast Readers Choice Award three years in a row , and the Fodor’s Editor’s Choice award every year 10 years in a row. It’s the only fishing lodge in New Zealand ever to win a New Zealand Tourism Award (Business Excellence Award), and in 2018 Qualmark awarded the Lodge its prestigious Luxury Lodge certification. In 2022 Owen River Lodge became the first accommodation provider in New Zealand and the first fishing lodge in the world to gain a B Corp Certification.

What Borenstein wanted was to start a fishing lodge, but what he might have created is instead more akin to an extended family. And Borenstein gives much of the credit for the award-winning lodge to his team. David Pike and his wife Rebekah are lodge hosts and managers. Two of the fishing guides have partners who work in hospitality at the lodge. They all love to fish, and they all work together in the spirit of showing the guests the best possible view of New Zealand.

At the end of the 2022/2023 season, when Borenstein sat down with Eleven Angling owner Chad Pike to discuss selling Owen River Lodge, he had just one burning question. What would new ownership change if he were to sell his lodge?

According to Borenstein, the answer was, “Absolutely nothing.” And that’s all he needed to hear. He knew his “family” would stay intact and the New Zealand paradise he created would be in good hands.

Borenstein sold the lodge to Eleven Angling; helped transition to the new ownership; semi-retired to his home next door; and in 2024 married his former assistant lodge manager and FFI-certified casting instructor, Kylie Sargeant.

Eleven Angling has an impressive portfolio of dozens of adventure tourism operations with select fly-fishing lodges in places including Chile, Iceland, Bahamas, and Colorado. Most of them were meticulously designed and built from the ground up, and many preexisting locations needed extensive upgrades, renovations, and restaffing to meet Eleven’s quality standards in terms of accommodations, accoutrements, food and dining, staffing, and of course fishing. As a group, they are unquestionably the best fly-fishing lodges in the world.

To think that Owen River Lodge could seamlessly “join the family” and become part of the portfolio without any major changes is high praise indeed. It speaks not just to the facility and the property but to the world-class guides, chefs, and hospitality staff who make every facet of the experience unblemished.

National Parks: Trekking the Wild Lands

When I think of the phrase “national parks” I think automatically of lines of traffic jams under towering cliffs at Yosemite, parking lots full of spectators at Old Faithful, or the Blue Ridge Parkway, aka “America’s favorite drive,” which meanders for 469 miles and in 2021 had 15 million visitors. In America the intention is to make these parks accessible to all. It’s a noble idea, and one I am grateful for, as my three children were junior park rangers in more than a dozen parks from Acadia National Park to Rocky Mountain National Park. As a result they forever became outdoorspeople.

New Zealand’s 13 national parks are a little different. Okay, a lot different. You’ll see no parking lots, traffic jams, or toll booths collecting entrance fees because there are no roads and no cars. In New Zealand, a “national park” is a pristine, undeveloped wilderness area. To see and experience it, you need to hike. In New Zealand it’s called trekking or tramping and the trails are called “tracks.”

There are ten national parks on the South Island, three of them are within striking distance of Owen River Lodge: Nelson Lakes, Abel Tasman, and Kahurangi national parks. As an aside, Eleven’s other New Zealand operation—Cedar Lodge—is strategically located near the boundary of Mount Aspiring National Park farther to the south.

The Milford Track in Fiordland National Park is likely New Zealand’s most famous walk. In the 2,000-square-mile Kahurangi National Park, one major objective is the Leslie-Karamea Track, which takes six to nine days to complete and follows some of the South Island’s best trout water. Most of the trampers who use the tracks and backcountry huts in the national parks are young and athletic, there aren’t all that many, and their objectives have nothing to do with trout.

Another way to see the mountain peaks and get into these pristine river valleys is by helicopter. It’s still highly controlled, and by permit only, but guests at Owen River Lodge can fly to a select river in a national park in the morning, walk 3 to 5 miles of river, spotting trout while the sun is high, and be back in the lodge lounge for cocktails at 6 P.M. Only a handful of helicopter companies operate in the park. They know where the trekkers are, and they know where they have dropped other fishermen in recent weeks. They work conscientiously with the guides to make sure you find a fresh piece of water—usually 3 to 6 kilometers (1.8 to 3.7 miles)—that hasn’t been fished in a week or more.

New Zealand’s national parks are pristine and inaccessible. They must be seen if you’re in New Zealand, but they aren’t the only places to fish.

There are also 54 conservation parks in New Zealand, which include 36 so-called forest parks, covering an area of 2,690,191 hectares (10,000 square miles). These would be the equivalent of national forests in the U.S. They are conserved for public use and public recreation including hunting and fishing, and they do have some gravel roads for easier access.

As an example, Victoria Forest Park to the south of Owen River Lodge is New Zealand’s largest forest park (800 square miles). It is covered in pristine beech forests including all five species of beech found in New Zealand—red, silver, mountain, black, and hard beech. You’ve heard of “mouse years” where the beech forests drop their nuts and the trout put on extra pounds due to an explosion in the rodent population? It all starts with the beech trees.

Victoria Forest Park includes the Inangahua, Maruia, and Grey rivers. Richmond Hill Forest Park is also on the doorstep of Owen River Lodge, just to the north and east.

Beyond these large conserved areas, there are hundreds of other fishing locations some of them just outside park boundaries, others are roadside, and a great many run through private farmland. In New Zealand, private land owners do not generally own the water rights—you can wade up- or downstream from public bridges. But hundreds of small streams become de facto “private” because they run through large swaths of farmland, and access is feasible only by private roads and through locked gates and across many sheep and cattle guards. The guides at Owen River Lodge are on a first-name basis with many of these farmers in their region, they know their children and families (it’s a micro small-town vibe), they help them keep an eye on their properties, and at times they lend a hand with farm work. Some of the best fishing in New Zealand takes places shortly after a friendly discussion about the weather, maybe a complaint about the government, and a promise to keep a look out for trespassers and to close all the gates behind us.

Communing with Trout

It’s a little trite to proclaim that the guides in New Zealand are among the best in the world at spotting trout. Everyone already knows that.

Even in dark conditions they can see the fish. On the one mostly cloudy day I fished in 2024, my guide Gavin Stones chose a small river that was heavily forested. He predicted that tall stands of trees along the banks would cut the glare, and he was exactly right. It helps greatly to have a dark background across the river from you, and those shadowy bands of tall conifers gave us large windows of water with no glare. The light-colored rocks on the bottom and gray/blue clay patches also helped make it easy to see them. We didn’t need the sun.

Much more important than locating the fish is the guides’ uncanny ability to discern a trout’s attitude, and predict its behavior accordingly. That’s the real Kiwi magic.

Some fish—particularly many of the ones we saw in slow water—were simply not feeding. They barely moved, they were right on the bottom, and the guides would quickly move past them.

Sure, they’d let me make some futile casts while they scouted ahead for high-percentage targets, but they didn’t waste much time on fish that were apparently napping. Spotting trout in New Zealand is not really what makes a great guide—it’s finding the right fish and exercising excellent time-management skills so you can focus on the best targets.

The trout you are looking for are the ones that are visibly moving, and this group exhibits a wide variety of behaviors. Some are infrequently feeding just a few inches to the left or right. The guides will tell you trout like this will take a fly, but it has to drift close by. Often a nondescript, size 18 nymph pattern is the first choice for fish like this. If the fish freezes up and stops feeding, it’s a sign that the trout has been alerted. A spooked trout in New Zealand doesn’t always bolt for cover. Sometimes they merely stop feeding.

In another common yet frustrating scenario, the fish knows you are there, but continues to feed. In this case you find yourself changing flies, often going to larger and flashier flies while the fish continues to ignore your offerings. Often, our final pitch was a Squirmy Wormy or a Pat’s Rubber Legs. In the clear water you could see the fly drifting toward the fish. The trout would hold position until the fly approached, and then neatly sidestep the phony to allow it to pass. These aren’t easy trout.

Stubborn fish can waste precious time, and it’s a truth while sight fishing in New Zealand that each successive cast has a decreasing chance of success. I’m a steelheader in my bones, so I consider persistence to be one of fly fishing’s great virtues. In New Zealand it’s not. I’ve also spent years and years fishing fertile tailwaters and spring creeks with thousands of difficult fish. So many times I’ve been rewarded by finally finding the right fly and suddenly catching every fish in the river.

But New Zealand is nothing like so many of these typical North American experiences. If you are going to “figure it out” you better do all the figuring before you make that first cast, because that’s by far your best chance. That’s why it helps to have a good guide who can not only see the trout but judge how it will react to the fly, and plan an effective strategy to get the fly there effectively without alerting the fish.

My most important advice to New Zealand newcomers is to hone your own fish-spotting skills, work hard to see the fish after the guide finds it, and if possible get into position so you can see the fish while you are casting. Often, this means being sneaky and getting close.

On my cloudy day with Gavin, he spotted a large brown on a light-colored gravel flat. “It stands out like dog’s balls, mate,” said Gavin. You certainly couldn’t miss it. But when I got down in the water directly behind the fish, glare painted the surface, and there were no nearby landmarks. I couldn’t see the trout, so he directed my casts “six feet upstream” and then “three feet to the right.” It took a half dozen gauging casts to get the fly right in front of the fish. By then, we had tripped the security alarms and the fish refused every fly.

Thirty minutes later we had another trout in a similar situation. I could see the fish from up on the bank, but when I got into the water there was too much glare. Instead of taking another Hail Mary cast, I waded into the center of the stream and created a different angle. It was more difficult wading, but looking back toward the bank I could clearly see the fish, and that made all the difference. On my first cast, the nymph dropped 4 feet in front of the big brown and we watched him eagerly take the fly. Seeing the fish and making the first cast count is everything.

Another odd thing about New Zealand’s small streams is that there are very few dense hatches like those you’ll see on a trout stream in North America. At home, we’re used to scenarios where most of the fish are acting in similar ways—during a hatch they are all feeding, and during nonhatch periods, they are all mostly inactive. It almost seems orchestrated—that’s why we chase hatches.

In New Zealand the fish are not usually regulated by these big biological events—each individual trout seems to have its own unique rhythms. You can find one fish that is acting listless, and a half mile upriver you may find another up near the surface, clearly looking for food.

A clear example of this occurred in the upper Karamea River in Kahurangi National Park, with guide Jason McDonald. We came across a deep, emerald green pool with a bouldered tailout that descended into rapids. There were several large trout spread across the glassy tailout, but they were motionless. I scratch my head when I see trout like this because in 40 years of fishing in North America, I’ve never seen a trout that was obviously sleeping.

We skirted the deep pool and trekked into a boulder field clogged with granite and crisscrossed with downed trees. The national parks are wild, rugged places. Nothing here is manicured, and the chaos created by annual flood waters and tectonic uplift in an old-growth forest is sometimes stunning. We scrambled upriver on the shady side of the river to conceal ourselves, and stopped regularly to scan pockets and pools behind boulders.

The river churned through a fairly steep gradient in this stretch with no large pools, just pockets and cushions in front of or behind scattered boulders. At one point, Jason said, “Wait here, I’m going to the other side to have a look.” He navigated to the opposite bank, maneuvering from one sheltered stance to the next, much of it in chest-deep water. He stood stock still on the other side, just for a moment, and then motioned enthusiastically for me to follow. When I got close enough to hear him over the roar of the river he shouted, “This one will eat a dry fly, mate!”

In front of us there was a giant boulder the size of a school bus. It looked as though it was split in half in another eon, and one finger of the river ran through a coffin-size crevice and fed a perfectly symmetrical pool about the size and shape of a basketball key. In that plume of current there was a single large brown trout. He was elevated, using his broad yellow pectoral fins to hover close to the surface, drifting back and forth across the span of the current as though he was looking for something. Clearly he was hunting.

We knelt in a patch of clean gravel and looked through my fly boxes. Jason chose a very simple Elk-hair Caddis from a row that I have carried dutifully for three decades. I haven’t used them because I felt like they were maybe overdressed for most of the situations I find myself in. I find myself reaching for more “sophisticated” and modern patterns with a new twist, while Jason trusted the track record of Al Troth’s caddis. You don’t need fancy flies in New Zealand. You need sharp eyes and delicate accuracy.

My fly landed exactly where I had planned, but the trout roamed far to the left at just the wrong time, and I thought I had failed miserably. The fish was a rod length away, and just picking up my fly line for a second cast might spoil it. But somehow the fish saw the Elk-hair Caddis bobbing in the periphery of his vision, turned to the right, and tracked under the foam line straight for the fly.

Jason exclaimed “I’ve lost the fish,” just at the moment the great white mouth of the trout closed around the Elk-hair Caddis.

I paused, waited for the trout to turn away, and set the hook.

“Oops, there it is,” laughed Jason as the fish bolted into fast water, cut a sharp angle around a submerged rock, leapt high into the air, and then raced downstream. What happened in the next 90 seconds was a comedy of slipping and falling, clutching or bracing against rocks, and praying to the gods. At one point Jason used his net handle to clear the line from around an underwater obstacle. In another instance he was slapping the water with it to scare the fish away from a precipice of rapids.

In that same week I had lost trout around logs and boulders, broken off a trout when my loop knot snagged in the snake guides, and broken off another big trout at very close range because the line wasn’t wrapped back onto the reel neatly during the fight with a previous fish, and it jammed when the fish took off.

I should have lost this trout with all that calamity and fast water . . . looking back across the river, I saw my friend Brian O’Keefe with his hands on his knees, clearly belly laughing at our antics. I finally managed to get the head of the trout unburied from the fast water and skidded the fish into an eddy behind a rock, and Jason miraculously managed to fill his net with 7 pounds of brown trout. That old-fashioned Elk-hair Caddis was in the roof of his hook-jawed mouth, and the tippet was badly abraded by the trout’s teeth and by whatever rocks the fish had been wrapped around.

I was lucky to land that fish, but then any day in New Zealand is a “lucky” day. Only a handful of people make it into some of these remote streams annually, and to experience this kind of wilderness, and this kind of eye-to-eye contact with the most fascinating trout in the world is something no one forgets.

It’s soul-cleansing.

Book Your Destination

Air New Zealand has flights from major U.S. hubs including San Fransisco, New York, and Houston. You’ll fly to Auckland and then connect to Nelson where the lodge will pick you up. You can book your trip directly through Eleven or major agencies like The Fly Shop.

elevenexperience.com

Recommended Gear

The sun is intense in New Zealand and if ultraviolet light doesn’t get you, the sand flies will. Cover every inch of your skin with UPF 40+ clothing. Treat your clothes with Permethrin before you travel, or buy Simms Bugstopper brand. Sun gloves are especially important and everything should be drab earthy colors or camo. Buy the best sunglasses and bring two different lens colors for varied conditions.

• Orvis PRO Waterproof Hip Pack 10L / $279
• Abel Rove ported Satin Blue III / $895
• Thomas & Thomas Avantt II 9-foot 5-weight / $965
• Scientific Anglers Amplitude Textured Infinity / $130
• Skwala Sol Wading Pants / $130
• Duck Camp Original Bamboo Hoodie (woodland) / $70
• Simms Bugstopper SunGlove Stone / $45
• Costa Reefton PRO Gold Mirror / $313

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Ross Purnell is the editor and publisher of Fly Fisherman.

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