It has been hot, cold, dry, wet calm and windy, sometimes all in the one day.
But if there is one factor that just about guarantees poorer than average fishing, it is the dreaded northwest wind.
Northwest winds are caused by dropping atmospheric pressure, which in turn causes trout to be less active and probably reduces activity in their prey species.
This all adds up to hard fishing.
Trout can be caught in such circumstances but not as well as when pressure is rising or steady.
The ideal is to have a stationary high-pressure system prevailing.
This allows us to fish in warm sunny conditions, which is preferable even if the fish are not co-operating.
We cannot do anything about the weather but at least we can try to pick the right days to go fishing.
• This weekend is not the most promising weatherwise, but it could be a lot worse.
Because of rain during the week, most rivers are still well above normal so check the website for levels before picking a destination.
If a river is falling it could be still fishable even if it is above normal.
The critical factor is the clarity. If you can see the riverbed in 30cm of water it is clear enough to fish as trout will be able to see your lure or fly.
If the water is little murky use a dark lure such as a black and gold toby or if fly fishing, a Mrs Simpson or a fuzzy wuzzy.
The next thing is to find the fish. When rivers are high, trout avoid the strongest current and frequent slack water on the bottom or close to the edges of the river.
The chances are the water will be cool, so fish flies and lures slowly as trout, being cold-blooded, do not dash around in cold water.
• I was on the Taieri on Monday evening with my fishing class. It was running at 40cumecs and passed the clarity test and was about 10°C.
So far so good.
However, there was a biting wind blowing and it was raining on and off and the air temperature was 8°C. There were no flies hatching or if they did, they were flattened by the rain or blown away.
The most significant events of the evening were two cases of hypothermia.
The main learning from the class would be to pick nice weather to go fishing.
• You would think I would know better than to fish in a northwesterly wind but that is exactly what Murray and I did last Sunday.
The start was promising — I had three takes in the first 20 minutes, missing the first one, hooking the other two and losing both of them.
However, we saved the day by hooking two trout and landing them. The best one was a 2kg brown trout, which was celebrated with a cup of tea.
