As my wife and I have recently returned from our first visit to New Zealand, I would like to share some impressions.  New Zealand is a lovely country, not unlike Maine in attracting tourists who enjoy beautiful seacoast, rivers, lakes, and mountains.  It also has a significant advantage over Maine at this time of year.  As a southern hemisphere country, it was still summer in New Zealand when we were there.

New Zealand is largely an agricultural country.  At just over 100,000 square miles in area it is about the size of Great Britain.  Where Great Britain has some fifty-five million people, New Zealand has just over four million, along with twenty million sheep.  Sheep are fairly ubiquitous, but there are also a surprising number of dairy cattle and farm-raised deer.  On the South Island, the larger and more rural of New Zealand’s major islands, it was strange to see field after field of domestic deer.  Venison is joining lamb as a significant export product.

Over the past twenty years New Zealand has embarked on a campaign to develop world-class wines.  This has been a very successful effort, so much so that tidy vineyards now dot the landscape in large areas of both the North and South Islands.  The best-known to us in the United States is the Marlborough region in the north part of the South Island.  This is the home of the distinctive sauvignon blanc wines that have won plaudits throughout the world.  However, other regions produce excellent cabernet sauvignon-merlot blends and pinot noirs.  It is an impressive national economic development effort from which we may be able to learn some lessons.

New Zealanders are a universally friendly people.  They welcome visitors and go out of their way to be helpful. One of many examples: slightly lost in Wellington, New Zealand’s capital, a passer by insisted on going well out of his way to make sure we found the Parliament buildings.

Mainers, too, have a well-deserved reputation for friendliness to tourists.  In fact, we were struck by many similarities between New Zealand and our home state.  We both share much of the physical beauty marked by seacoast and mountain.  Neither state permits billboards, and both have worked to preserve unspoiled coast line.  Both Maine and New Zealand have well-known trout fisheries.  In fact, one of the reasons we made the trip was to fly fish for those large brown trout for which New Zealand is famous.

This turned out to be the only mildly disappointing aspect of the trip.  New Zealand browns proved difficult to find, let alone catch.  We went to the heart of the best trout fishing in New Zealand, an area with access to eighteen rivers, yet we only caught one brown.  It was surprising in part because the rivers look like they should be full of trout.   The few we came across, and virtually all are visible in the clear water, were big (five to eight pounds) and not much interested in the flies we offered. I can recall casting to one big brown for over an hour, trying most of my guides available nymphs, all to no avail.

I believe one of the issues accounting for the lower numbers of trout is a fast growing algae called didymo.  Didymo creates a brown sludge that coats river banks and gradually strangles a river. It has infected three or four of New Zealand’s best fishing rivers.  Their Department of Conservation is desperately searching for ways to control it, rather like Maine and our problem with milfoil in certain lakes.  So far they are relying primarily on cleaning all fishing gear that might be contaminated.  This seems unlikely to have more that a delaying effect on this problem.

There is one other problem that both Maine and New Zealand share – black flies.  The difference is that in New Zealand they are called sand flies and they are really black flies on steroids.  They flourish along clear, pristine water ways.  They rise in clouds to greet hikers and fishermen.

But who would dwell on sand flies in the context of such a splendid experience.  New Zealand is worth a visit.. Just don’t forget the bug dope.