It’s officially Spring in NZ. Guess what that means …

September 03, 2022

By Felix Borenstein

As you probably know, Owen River Lodge only opens during the fishing season. In this part of New Zealand, that’s from 1 October through to 30 April. We close from May to September. That’s when we do most of our maintenance work.

It always amazes me during August and September. It’s like the lodge awakens from its winter slumber and starts to shine and greet the new season, looking forward to our friends coming back to stay at Owen River Lodge and fish with us again.

All the outdoor furniture has been re-oiled, all the decks have been cleaned and most of them have been re-oiled too. Ryan’s been busy doing all the difficult maintenance work and the jobs I hate, like repainting walls inside the guest rooms and the main lodge, and waxing all the floors.

After 2 1/2 long years we can’t wait to greet our guests from around the world. But I’m also very grateful to all the Kiwis who chose to stay and fish with us over the past two-and-a-bit seasons.

Our beautiful, spruced-up fishing lodge will be humming over the 2022/23 season!

Re-certifying our Climate Positive status

As another aspect of our maintenance work, we’ve just finished measuring all our carbon. This is a requirement for renewing our Ekos Climate Positive certification. It involves weighing, measuring and documenting every aspect of the business of operating a fishing lodge, including:

• All inbound goods
• All fuel and energy consumption
• All mileage for everyone employed at the lodge, including our talented fishing guides
• All rubbish going off-site.

Honestly? I’d rather be fishing. But that’s what it takes to get third-party accreditation and it’s worth doing. It means every claim we make to you about Owen River Lodge’s sustainability and environmental responsibility can be backed up.

We’ll continue to offset 120% of our climate emissions by purchasing local carbon credits, supporting native forest regeneration in our region.

Our women-only luxury fly fishing retreat is open to the world in April 2023

This is one to put in the diary. We ran it as a trial in 2021 and I kid you not, it was one of the absolute highlights of that year.

Eight wonderful Kiwi women with varying degrees of fly-fishing experience descended on the lodge and basically ran amok—sassing their guides, laughing a lot, and yes, catching wild brown trout too. Everyone bagged at least one fish, including a stunning double digit stunner.

Now that New Zealand’s borders are wide open again, it’s time to share the love. It doesn’t matter if you’re an expert or don’t know one end of a fly rod from the other—the retreat caters for all levels, and being a woman is the only qualification you’ll need.

All the details are here: https://www.owenriverlodge.co.nz/blog/attention-women-our-trout-need-you-in-april/.

Be quick, though—half the places are already booked and believe me, you definitely won’t want to miss out on All. The. Fun.

Wishing you and your loved ones well
Felix, Kylie and the Owen River Lodge family

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