It was an ordinary day in town, and as I perused the counter in the local tackle shop, I overheard another customer asking for advice as to what sort of trout fly he should use for the Maratai Dam.
Without thinking, I said “Oh—Turkey Red!”
He turned around, and in no time we were deep in conversation.
It turned out that he was going to fish at the tailrace of the powerhouse, where I was working as the operator that night.
I told him to try a spot next by the nearest turbine to the lift.
That night, at midnight, I was in control of the 180 million watts of electricity supplying New Zealand with some of their power.
As we were the speed-controlling powerhouse for the nation, we had to monitor the running times for the five turbines.
As the load reduced that night, I carefully monitored the running times and sequence of shutdowns of the various turbines. This ensured that, in the morning when the Number 5 turbine was running, the next one to start would be Number 4, then Number 3, and so on. Before the morning cups of coffee were boiled in the millions of jugs around New Zealand, at about 7 am, I had turbines 5, 4, 3, and 2 powered up—each one at a progressively lesser rate.
Why? Well, with this configuration, a very strong whirlpool was formed outside the idle Number 1 turbine.
Guess where all the feeding trout were?
Right in the centre of this whirlpool.
My new friend turned up at 6am and tossed his fly into the water with the Turkey Red fly on it. Within seconds, he had a strike and hauled in a lovely 2-pound trout.
For the next hour I watched as he eventually caught his limit of trout from the whirlpool I had engineered.
By 7am, I had to let all the turbines go to full power. The whirlpool disappeared, and the trout with it.
So, somewhere in New Zealand, there is a gent who had a real fishing tale to tell.
Little did he know that I had manipulated the entire power supply of new Zealand to give him his great fishing experience.
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