International travel with fishing gear

May 28, 2022

By Felix Borenstein

Traveling with fly fishing gear internationally can be a real pain in the backside.

Its funny, as Kylie and I are starting to pack a 10 day bone fishing trip to the Cook Islands, where they have no loan gear, and it appears we are packing a complete fly shop (or two)

Anyway, I digress…

Way back 19 years ago when I established Owen River Lodge, I felt it was imperative that we should offer the world’s best loan fishing gear – and that commitment has never wavered.

Nothing annoyed me more than going to a lodge that said they had loan gear and finding out their gear is older than I am or didn’t have a size to fit me properly !

We have a huge range of the industries very best fly fishing equipment as loan gear for our guests to use, all included in our package rates.

This includes:
• Men’s Simms G3 Guide Gore-Tex waders – from Small to XXL
• Men’s Simms G3 & G4 Pro wading books –Size 7 > 16
• Women’s Simms G3 Guide Gore-Tex waders –from Small to XXL
• Women’s Simms Vapour & Flyweight boots –from size 5 up
• Simms Guide guard socks : small, medium, large & XL
• Simms Pro wading staffs

We’ve also invested in an extensive range of Sage freshwater 6 weight rods & reels

We currently have the just released Sage R8 flyrod rod, along with X, Igniter, Trout LL, Foundation, Pulse and for those that love the Sage One rod – we have kept a couple of those too. These are all matched with the Sage Spectrum LT reels all loaded with RIO Grand camo lines.

Our team of guides will provide you with the right fly, for each and every wild New Zealand brown trout you will encounter.

So you really only need to bring the clothes to wear whist fishing, either wet wading or under your waders and a pair of polaroid sun glasses – we’ll even give you a ORL cap !

The secret to being comfortable whilst fishing in New Zealand is to wear multiple thin layers rather than something big and bulky. I swear by New Zealand Merino clothing and live in short and long sleeve Merino t-shirts. As we are located in a sub alpine region, always throw in a fleece or two as our weather can be changeable.

It may also pay to pack some non fishing clothes for dinner – no jacket required.

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