Cannibal Gorge

John and I have just returned from a 7 day trip in an area nicknamed "The Cannibal Gorge" It was named this because the gorge used to be a popular route for a few different Maori tribes... the legend is that there was a battle between two Maori tribes over passage through the gorge... the victors celebrated by feasting on the losers... hmmmmmm...... so we hiked through the gorge for 9 hours and got through to the river... we feasted on oatmeal, rice and beans, peanut butter on tortillas.... we could use some more protein though! After reaching the river on a showery rainy kind of day we set up camp on the rive bank and waited for it to clear... the next morning did not look very promising.. cloudy... wet... river was up slightly... we made breakfast and fished for a few hours.... we spotted 4 fish... landed one... It happened to be my largest fish of the trip... 8.5 pounds! by the afternoon the rain came heavy and we retreated to our tents! From 4pm that afternoon it rained... and rained... and rained... It rained all night... we woke up to a swollen... brown... dirty river... so... we ate breakfast when the rain slowed down at 10am... then lunch at 2pm... still raining... read a few books... cover to cover.. skipped dinner because it rained hard till 9pm.... ate a few granola bars... a handfull of peanuts for dinner.... tried to sleep... rained all night again... woke up at 8am to rain.... finally it cleared for 20 min.... we scrambled... packed up and ran our soaked crap to a hut 4 miles away.... Well of course the sun came out... so we sat at the hut.. splitting firewood... drying out EVERYTHING... debating what to do.... We had just spent 41 hours in our tents... it is now sunny... the river is still up but is sure to drop... so after being bored out of our minds having read all our books in one day... we headed back to the river the next day... We fished that following afternoon... We had decent sun... spotting was ok... the river was still up but you could spot some fish... we landed a few nice fish... all fish over 6 pounds... The next day we woke up to more clouds... the weather was starting to get depressing... everytime we thought it was going to get good... clouds... rain... river goes up.... we fished all of day 6 in the clouds... we did spot a few fish... had a good day but the river was just not cooperating... John and I finally decided to bail... on day 7 we walked 14 miles back to our car.... this was a good decision... it rained for 3 hours on our hike... the river is definitely unfishable again and we would just be sitting in our tents! New Zealand weather can be finicky and when you walk all that way to fish a river you have no control over the conditions... luckily we did manage to land a few really nice fish and have a good time.... This is Johns last fishing trip of his stay... We are headed back to Christchurch for the next few days and he flies back to Wyoming on the 10th... It has been great fishing with John for the last 5 weeks... I will be taking a 6 day break before I meet up with Josh and Marty to start my second part of the trip... I will fish for 7 weeks with the Jack Dennis boys... many more stories to come...