One of my favorite things about Dave and Amelia Jensen is that–after spending years guiding and three months every year catching huge fish in New Zealand–they have not become even a little jaded about the joys of fly fishing. Just listen to the excitement and wonder in their voices, and Amelia’s laugh reflects the absolute joy they feel about experiencing something so unexpected and spectacular.
Here’s their description of the action:
The forecast was for Nor’wester winds to pick up to 140kmh mid-morning, and they certainly did that. The fronts were coming daily and we thought to just go for a good long walk and see what came of it. We hoped for one fish, maybe one each? It was a small enough stream that maybe the lowering water had pushed the trout down to the main river. It was a large enough stream that there was still summer holding water. So we walked. And found trout. Dave hooked up but the top fly lodged into its dorsal fin and the fish had its way about the run. Hard to control it from swimming back into the second trout’s zone, it swam past Amelia’s fish and wedged into the upstream pillow-well of the large boulder, in a safe resting lie. Rather than barge in to net it and spook Amelia’s fish, Amelia set the camera on the scene and grabbed her rod to give the second brown a quick cast. It wasn’t going to refuse anything floating past. Sometimes you wish you had a third person with you to run the camera and audio–to make these moments “more perfect.” But it’s these moments of imperfection that life gives you that are so perfect because they are imperfect. They are perfectly authentic. These are the magical moments that you get when you and your wife or husband just make a choice to get out together and enjoy life together–just by getting out and having a go and seeing what the day brings. This is why we continue to seek ways to live life as we do.
