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The browns keep coming.
Fri 29th March, 2013
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  The browns kept coming this week and once again the Tongariro has produced some excellent fish including the winning brown in the annual Taupo Fishing Club competition …well done Andrew Christmas.
There are some nice fish in the river at present and it wouldn’t surprise me to see a photograph of someone proudly holding up a double figure specimen any day now … it happens every year.
The brown above took a weighted caddis pupa early in the week and the fish pictured right took the same pattern a couple of days later.
The summer weather still refuses to slacken its grip across the North Island .. not that I’m complaining … winter will arrive soon enough. But from a fishing point of view at least this week has seen some occasional cloud cover which triggered a few day time hatches that the trout were quick to spot.  I was out with mad keen fisho's Mike and Anna Hudson on Tuesday who I met three years ago when they fished the river for the first time while on holiday from the U.K.
This time they spent an enjoyable afternoon on some of the upper river stretches which they’d never fished before. We probably take some of the scenery up there a little bit for granted but they both commented a number of times how beautiful it was.
After breakfast the next day they “tailed” me to my favourite town pool for a social fish together and the Tongariro didn’t disappoint. We kept at it until just after lunch and during that time caught a real mixed bag including some solid rainbow jacks, hens full of eggs and the brown
{ above right} which Mike netted for me.
Fish numbers seem to have picked up this week. On Monday I fished with an old mate of mine U.K angling journalist Terry Thomas.
Earlier that morning I'd noticed anglers taking a few fish below the road bridge but as we walked upriver past the old Sportsman's pool we saw nothing at all in there. A couple of days later as I headed upriver again with Mike and Anna we spotted at least a dozen swimming around.
It was the same story when we crossed Red Hut bridge. I'd been up that way a few times lately and spotted nothing under the bridge. But this time we watched several fish making their way slowly upstream.
There are stil a few around but the sardine sized trout that have been a feature of catches again this summer have finally thinned out as they make their way to the lake.
Based purely on the numbers of these juvenile trout I’ve caught myself or seen caught by other anglers, together with the amount of fry you see throughout the river, it looks as if we’ve had a couple of good spawning years.
Female rainbows lay thousands of eggs but the mortality rate is extremely high because of predation , floods etc. Some research I read mentioned that on average only one out of every thousand would become a mature fish and yet sixty thousand trout enter the Tongariro during the spawning runs. It just made me think that if you did have a couple of above average years and instead of one ... two survived ... you would double the fish population!
Of course it'll be a few years before we know if my very unscientific observations are right or not. But the three fish bag limit has been in place since 1990, may be if fish numbers do increase and license sales continue to fall they might have to adjust it again in future ... we'll see.
 One of the things you become pretty adept at if your a fly fisher is untangling leaders and undoing the knots that fly lines tie all by themselves. This is especially true if you fish a lot with beginners. On saying that I still get in some proper old messes myself ... which serves me right for being greedy and fishing three flies. The other day I was asked what was the best way to sort out a tangled leader ... well you only have two choices ... reach for the scissors or spend a bit of time undoing it.
If you've been fly-fishing for a while hopefully you will have noticed that some thing was wrong before you continued to re-cast, thus preventing it from becoming much worse.
These tangles are usually simple affairs to sort out because although the line lower down has wrapped itself around the leader higher up, the coils of line are still quite loose because they haven't been repeatedly cast out, something novices often do unknowingly.
A good tip here, especially on a windy day, is once you've retrieved the line leave the tangled section in the water at your feet and begin trying to untangle it there.
If you take it out of the water when the wind is blowing your heavy nymphs will act like some sort of crazy pendulum and you'll soon have tangles around tangles which will make your nice straight leader look like a pile of your mother-in-laws knitting.
If things do become a bit more complicated but it still looks as if its worth having a go, first of all cut off the point fly where it’s connected to the bend of the fly above. By removing this section it will make it much easier to unpick the rest of the puzzle in front of you. If it’s a nymphing rig leave the bomb attached because it'll give you a reference point from which to work.
Resist the urge to tug at the line, this will tighten everything up creating an even smaller mess which will prove impossible to undo.
It’s a good idea to carry a safety pin or large needle in your fly box which is handy for teasing out wind knots or smaller tangles.
Unless things look pretty straight forward most of the time I prefer to cut out the tangled bit and replace that section of leader because even if you do manage to sort it out the line ends up twisted, kinked and weakened which could result in a lost fish. … and you can bet your life it will be the best trout you’ve hooked all year!
 
Weather-wise it looks like more of the same for the holiday weekend but the long range forecast is predicting a change next week with definitely may be a chance of possible showers.
If we do get any it will encourage more fish to trickle through. This gleaming silver hen, full of eggs was caught mid-morning yesterday
{ Good Friday } and if the last few days are anything to go by it could be good ... see you out there.
Tight lines guys.
Mike |
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