My Personal Best Rainbow Trout Caught in New Zealand!

Last month I went on one incredible journey to the country of New Zealand (NZ) and fished the canals of Tekapo in hopes to land a rainbow trout of a lifetime. To give you some context, the NZ record had been caught out of these exact canals this past August and weighed in at 42lbs 1 oz. It is typical to catch a rainbow in double digits and one even has a decent shot at catching a trout in the 20 to 30 pound range. 

I posted a video on Barstool Outdoors while on this trip of a guy on the canal catching an 18 pound rainbow, and of course all of the key board warriors had to let everyone know that anyone could catch these size caliber of fish on the fly out west. Sure, someone could catch a trout of that size, but it would be one hell of a trophy and it’s pretty unlikely to catch another one of that size or bigger the same exact day. We came to this specific area in New Zealand because it is likely to have double digit trout be caught multiple times in one day, and even have a shot at a 30 pounder, which is crazy.

The fish is these canals get so big due to the thousands of salmon cages that are located in these canals, which provide an unlimited food source for these giant trout. The salmon will slip out of the cages along with the pellets that the farmers feed them with; therefore, the trout with stay near or under these cages constantly feeding. 

Alex Peric and I (no we are not dating), planned out our trip so that we would have five days to explore the South Island and three days to land a giant. It was pretty bad ass to live out of a van for five days, and to my surprise, it was incredibly easy to access everything we needed via a travel van app. We didn’t exactly arrive at the best time to catch these trout, but we both landed a damn good rainbow. I hope ya’ll enjoy Part 1 of our New Zealand fishing trip presented by Rocky Boots.