TOP TO BOTTOM Nick Reygaert and Liam Rodgers appearing just as I had emerged from a dive. Young Liam was walking to the water’s edge with the fish carcass in hand as I swam past, floundering through great white country. I asked him to wait a moment before tossing it back in, and I’m happy he listened. The Waitangi store is the premier trading post of the Chathams, where goods fetch approximately 2.2 times more Kiwi dollars than they do on mainland New Zealand. 20-minute drive from my home on New Zealand’s South Island. That puts me right in the heart of the roaring 40s, a real perk for the early mari-ners from which the blustery namesake originated but not so much for the modern-day fly angler. It was mid-September, the start of spring on this side of the equator and an unreliable time weather-wise. The South Island had been inundated with wind and rain so fierce that it made my house shake, downed trees and power lines in the neighborhood, and blew out rivers across the region. Still, the news of a drop to level three COVID restric-tions was a welcome change of fate. Level three meant we could venture beyond the grocery store or the pharmacy and could even get on planes to fly places again—domes-tically, at least—places like the Chatham Islands. A territory of New Zealand situated about 500 miles off the east coast of the South Island, Chatham and Pitt are the largest of 12 odd islands and home to the 780 inhabitants who call themselves Chatham Islanders. The islands are prone to a level of exposure somewhere between what we experience in Aotearoa and what the leopard seals and penguins put up with on the treeless, subantarctic Campbell and Auckland islands to the south. Weather charts for the week ahead were mostly covered in splotches of red and purple, with isobars so tight it was hard to distinguish one from the next. An Australian friend assured me via text that though the first couple days of our trip might feel like a tornado, the rest of the week should be fine. The day before we left, wind gusts on the South Island overturned two tractor trailers. And just to keep us on the edge of our seats, on the morning of departure my travel partner and the brains of the operation, Nick Reygaert, received T he 45 th parallel south lies about a an email warning that our flights would possibly be de-layed or cancelled due to the high winds. Nevertheless, we boarded the turbo prop ATR 72 on the tarmac in the “Windy City” of Wellington and violently lifted off toward our destination with nine other passengers in the back of the aircraft. The for-ward two-thirds of the plane were laden with cargo bound for the fridges, freezers and shop shelves of the Chathams. It was a curious setup; the flight attendant informed me cheerfully that Air Chathams was the only commercial air passenger service in the world that hauls both freight and humans in the same cabin. After an hour and a half of my tightly fastened seat belt keeping the top of my head from meeting the roof of the aircraft, we gained our first glimpse of Chatham Island. As rugged and barren as expected, it reminded me of flying into coastal western Alaska for the first time. Those initial moments were enthralling, but also a reality check: the island didn’t look inviting to any form of life, let alone a couple of flyfishermen from “the Mainland.” The small airport took a very DIY approach to arrivals, luggage and shuttles. The Chathams are 45 minutes ahead of New Zealand and a sign out front proudly proclaimed: “First to see the sun.” The faded yellow illustration of a beaming sun felt like a con considering the current conditions. The sign also had an outline of the island itself, with its oversized inner lagoon. If you took the destination on the merits of this sign alone, you could be forgiven for thinking you’d just arrived somewhere a bit farther north—say Kiribati or Fiji. Our shuttle driver, a veteran of clever small talk, assured us, “It never rains on the Chathams. It never blows on the Chathams either. It’s just like Hawaii— without the palm trees.” Paradise found. 064 CHATHAM ISLANDS
The Flyfish Journal The Flyfish Journal 13.4: Page 64
