The World’s Best Fly-Fishing Retreat Is an Epic Commute—and Totally Worth It

There’s nothing in New Zealand’s backcountry that can seriously bite, sting, strike, poke, jab, stick, or generally hurt you, my Kiwi fishing guide Alex assures me. At least not in any debilitating way.

“So we can move fast through the bush without worrying too much,” he explains. “Or we can stay here and hope the helicopter comes.”

Alex is telling me this because we’re huddled under the branches of a massive beech tree, taking shelter from an incoming lightning storm. To no avail, he's tried to radio the helicopter pilot who dropped us off here, on the upper reaches of the South Island’s Young River. The dense cloud cover seems to be affecting communication. Now we’re about to hightail it through the forest to reach a trekking shelter roughly two miles downstream, where two other members of our fishing group have taken refuge. Between us and the shelter, however, is a steep, slippery mountainside and the only “trail” to follow is the faint impression of a track where local biologists occasionally traipse through to check on traps they’ve set to catch stoats, an invasive ferret-like varmint.

“If we don’t reach the shelter before the helicopter picks them up, we could be waiting all day for conditions to improve. But at least if we’re in the bush, we may not get struck by lightning.”

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With the less bad option clear, we start speed-hiking across the forest, plowing through fern branches and sliding down moss-covered hillsides. Within 10 minutes, we’re muddy and dripping with sweat. As we begin picking our way across a rockslide, I hear Alex’s radio squawk with static. Then he’s on it, talking with the pilot. I’m far enough away to miss most of the back-and-forth, but as I get closer, I do hear: “We’re on the west slope, where the creek comes in. There’s a big boulder here. It may be large enough.”

When I catch up with Alex, all he says is: “He’s not going to be able to land, so we need to jump in when his skids touch down. Everything goes in the cockpit this time. Just jump in.”

Before it’s even possible to comprehend how this extraction might work, the thwop, thwop, thwop of the helicopter echoes off the walls of the valley. Suddenly, it appears below us, only a few meters above the Young River, and then it banks sharply up towards us. We hunker down next to a large boulder. It’s no bigger than a pickup truck. But without any hesitation the pilot steers the helicopter above us.

“Okay, let’s go,” Alex shouts under the whirring blades.

In a matter of seconds, we’re piling into the backseat and then lifting off into the rain and low clouds. When I get the headset on, the first thing I hear is the pilot.

“A little dicey, eh?” he says as we rush down valley, thunder rumbling up valley.

A little dicey indeed, but in less than a couple minutes we’re picking up the rest of our group. Ten minutes later, we’re back at Eleven Cedar Lodge with warm coffees in hand, joking about the whole incident, and trying to decide what pub to head to for fish and chips. Or should we get a lamb burger?

“It’s a shame we had to bail so early into the morning,” Alex says. “That first rainbow you caught was a beauty.”

Turning Up the Adventure Level

The world is full of glistening streams that produce impressive numbers of trout on a fly, but there are only a handful of locations around the globe can produce a true behemoth that you can sight cast to. Fewer still can pair those big fish with world-class hospitality and food—or a helicopter to give you a last-minute lift to escape an approaching storm.

Such is the singularity of Eleven Cedar Lodge.

The lodge, on the banks of the Makarora River, is the handiwork of Eleven, the high-end adventure company based in Colorado that has more than a dozen lodges around the globe, including its largest, Iceland’s Eleven Deplar Farm. In 2018, it purchased Cedar, which is often whispered about in fly-fishing circles as being home to some of the best trout fishing on the planet. In its 25-year existence before Eleven, it had hosted a who’s who of serious anglers, including legends like Lefty Krey, Mel Krieger, and Dave Whitlock. But the years had taken a toll, and Eleven’s plan was to bring new energy to the well-worn property. Then the pandemic happened, throwing off the upgrade schedule.

When I visited, in March of 2023, the lodge was just finishing its first full summer season since COVID and I was visiting the property with Brian O’Keefe, Eleven’s Angling Product Manager, who helps the company develop fishing adventures across its portfolio. By then, the main lodge had been refreshed and Eleven was in the process of acquiring another New Zealand property, Eleven Owen River Lodge, to further expand its portfolio. Tagging along at Cedar were two other Eleven team members, helping to hone Cedar’s hospitality offerings and fill out the activity options, which include mountain biking, jet boating, wine tasting, and hiking on a few of the South Island’s most memorable trails. Eleven was even in the process of sorting out how to offer heli-skiing in the winter.

But our trip was all about fishing.

“You won’t believe the clarity of these rivers,” O’Keefe told me when we talked prior to arrival. “And the fish, they’re just unbelievable fighters.”

Unlike most other trout fishing, fly-fishing in New Zealand is primarily a stalking sport. Instead of casting repeatedly into a good-looking spot, here you often don’t make a cast until you see a fish under the glass-like water. Once you’ve managed to accomplish that, you then need to sneak within striking distance to make a cast. Deliver the fly perfectly and you could be fighting a 25-inch rainbow. Make a splash, slip on a rock, cast a shadow in the wrong direction, get your fly line over a fish—or any other numerous ways to botch the delivery—and you’ll watch as a two-foot fish slowly moves off into deeper water, likely never to be seen again. For dedicated trout fishermen, it’s the equivalent of watching your favorite team flub the Super Bowl in the last minute.

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Of course, this is all assuming you can even spot the trout first, because doing that is near impossible for newbies to New Zealand fly-fishing.

“It helps to look for smudges in the water,” O’Keefe told me as we were fishing together one day. “The water is clear enough that you can see through to the bottom. But if there’s a smudge instead of clear rocks, that’s probably a fish.”

On our first day at Cedar, we helicoptered out and across a band of the Southern Alps to a remote creek called the Dingle Burn. The stream is impossibly picturesque, wending its way through grass tussocks in a remote valley with beech tree–covered hillsides. It’s a popular hiking destination, and we flew over two groups of trekkers as we cruised up valley to our landing zone, on a sandbar next to the Dingle Burn. To get here on foot would have required a day or two of trekking, but we were stringing up our rods within 30 minutes of leaving the lodge.

The sun was out. The fish were easy to spot—at least for the guides—and, between four of us, we caught roughly six apiece. Of course, in New Zealand, numbers aren’t the point. It’s quality over quantity, and while we all caught fish that would have been a season’s best in Colorado or Montana, they were just “decent” by Kiwi standards.

“This is small stream fishing at its best in New Zealand,” O’Keefe told me as we waited for our helicopter ride back to Cedar. “But just wait. You haven’t seen anything yet.”

Naturally, that only piqued my anticipation for the next morning. But that was when we got extracted ahead of the incoming lightning storm. That left only two days to land a true Kiwi bruiser. And while hanging out at Cedar would have been more than enough to make coming all this way worthwhile, the building itself is not the reason anyone comes here.

A Country House With World-Class Service

Eleven Cedar Lodge is small—just four rooms in the main house. Staying in it is like crashing at your rich friend’s cabin, if your friend had a private chef churning out New Zealand classics like poached green-lipped mussels and roasted lamb cutlets. Instead of the overattentive coddling you get at many high-end resorts, Eleven lodges are focused on laid-back indulgence. They are the “quiet luxury” of the hospitality world, and Cedar is no different.

Every morning, after a choose-your-own breakfast whipped up by the chef, we’d gear up for the day. Lunches are usually in the backcountry, depending on the activity. So, on the way out, everyone grabs a few snacks and the guides pack up a cooler of food from the kitchen. We’d then wait on the front porch for our helicopter pickup.

When we’d return at the end of the day, a host would be waiting at the edge of the lawn with cocktails to greet us as we walked beyond the helicopter’s rotor wash. A tray of appetizers would be sitting out on a table near the firepit. It was all very civilized—and over the top, of course. But because the entire atmosphere of Eleven Cedar Lodge is so relaxed and convivial, the pampering is comfortable in a way that few properties can match. Upon returning to the lodge in the afternoon, the guides would often join in for a beer or two, giving everyone the chance to hash over the day’s adventures.

With such an intimate lodge, many groups rent out the entire place, though plenty of people come with their spouse or a buddy or two. For guests not fishing, there’s no shortage of things to do—everything from hiking or mountain biking to wine tasting at a nearby vineyard. Many people will even take the two-hour car ride to Queenstown, the Aspen of the South Island.

During our rained-out afternoon, we headed into Wānaka, roughly an hour away. The town, full of boutiques and good restaurants, is set on the shores of Lake Wānaka, 300 meters deep and roughly 26 miles long. It’s massive, to say the least, and pristine. The snow-covered Southern Alps reflect off its waters like a glacial lake in Canada or Norway. Along one shoreline, there’s a lone willow tree in the middle of the lake, seemingly emerging from the deep (it’s actually growing on a tiny island). This single tree has become pop star-level famous in recent years, and nearly anyone visiting Wānaka can’t help but snag their own pic. Missing the shot would be like going to Honshu and not taking a shot of Mount Fuji for Instagram.

Of course, everywhere you turn in this part of New Zealand is another Mount Fuji–worthy view, whether it’s Lake Wānaka, the peaks of the Southern Alps, or just a meandering river cutting through a perfect valley floor.

When it comes to landscapes—and fishing, hiking, food, wine, and just about everything else that’s worthwhile in life—New Zealand does it better.

Bragging Rights for the Year

After our second day at Eleven Cedar Lodge got stormed out, our third day was washed out on account of muddy rivers, which made fishing near impossible. But the skies were clear and the weather stunning, so we hopped in the helicopter for a “tramp,” as the Kiwis call it, in Mount Aspiring National Park. We were dropped off at Siberia Hut, a 20-bed trekkers lodge in a remote valley, for the four-hour hike down to the Wilkin River, which flows into the Makaroro near Eleven Cedar Lodge.

Hiking in New Zealand is a national pastime, with an entire system devoted to constructing trails, maintaining them, and promoting it all. Tracks crisscross the entire nation, traversing everything from thick rainforest canopies and grass-covered hillsides to high-mountain saddles. Our hike, on the Gillespie Pass Circuit, started in an open valley with clear views of snow-covered peaks, and took us through a beech forest canyon where we could hear the roar of the river below us. We ended on the banks of the Wilkin River, where Eleven Cedar Lodge had arranged for a jet boat to meet us, with cold beer and cocktails, for the ride back to the lodge.

Even on a “ruined” day of fishing, the adventure proved next-level. Of course, that left just one final day to land a postcard-worthy trout. Luckily, it delivered.

On the closing day, we returned to the Young River, where we had been chased out two days earlier. This time, however, we were dropped off down valley, closer to its junction with the Makaroro. The largest fish of the day came towards the end, in maybe 20 inches of water where a side channel rejoined the main river.

The sun glared off the water and Alex scrambled up onto the bank to get a better vantage point of the river.

“Ryan, there’s a biggun’ here,” he said. “I need you to come up ten steps.”

Blinded by the sun, I simply listened to his instructions like I was following Google Maps. I cast once out into the main river to gauge distance on my cast, readjusted, then cast directly to the fish. The rainbow turned toward my fly but didn’t take it. Alex came down and tied on a different pattern. The trout did the same thing with that fly. So we tied on yet another one and waited ten minutes. Most fish would have hightailed it out of such shallow water by this point, knowing the jig was up, but this one stayed put.

I cast again. And after maybe ten casts and changing the fly four times, the fish finally took it—and raced downstream like a speedboat. Before I could even slow him, I was down to the backing on my reel. So I ran along the shoreline, trying to catch up with the fish as best I could, followed by Alex and O’Keefe. It took me down to a large pool, where I was able reel enough line back in to gain control of the fish. When Alex netted him, there wasn’t even anything to say. We just smiled and high-fived.

After a few moments, O’Keefe lifted the rainbow out of the net to show me how he wanted me to pose with it for his camera. “It may be six pounds, definitely five,” he said. We spent the next moment getting a few quick shots before we released it back into the deep. At the lodge later that night, word made its way around and everyone was keen to check out the pic.

That biggun’ constituted my bragging rights for the next year.

And yet, even though it was the biggest fish of the trip, I kept thinking back to a rainbow I'd caught earlier in the day. It was one of the few fish that I’d spotted rising before anyone else—before the guides even—and I had to wade across a fast section of riffles to get close enough to even make a cast. Branches were hanging over the water near where it was rising, so it was a tight window to cast into. I had to wade into place, nearly up to my chest, then wait until I could pinpoint its exact location.

When it rose again, I paused for a beat, then slung a sidearm cast under the tree branches into a spot five feet in front of the rise. As it drifted down, I could see the fish rise, like a breaching submarine, to take my fly. Alex, who was looking on from a high bank, hooted when my line went taught.

It took five minutes to land the fish, and up to that point it was the largest I’d caught on the trip—superseding the fish before that, which was larger than the one before that. This one, of course, would soon get outsized by the biggest of the trip, and yet it remained stuck in my mind. I had put in the work to spot it and wade to it. I’d made the ideal cast to it, and I was able to land it after a hectic fight. Everything, basically, fell into place.

The moral of that big-ish fish story: In New Zealand, perfection is not only something you can hope for. Occasionally, you can actually find it, too.

The Details: Eleven Cedar Lodge

Getting Here: Queenstown, two hours from Eleven Cedar Lodge, is the nearest large airport in New Zealand's South Island. Nearly all direct flights from the U.S. land in Auckland, where you’ll transfer to an in-country flight to Queenstown. Eleven offers shuttles from Queenstown.

What’s Included: Besides top-shelf liquor and any special requests like extra helicopter flights or unique activities, just about everything is included in the price. From $2,249 per night, with a three-night minimum.