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A busy week in Turangi.
Mon 6th January, 2014
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This Christmas and New Year was probably the busiest I've ever seen Turangi with tourists and holidaymakers everywhere. Most of the motels and holiday homes seemed to be full and on New Years Eve I queued for 30 mins at the super-market check-out. Hopefully some of this Xmas trade found its way into the tackle shops because they’ve had a hard time over the last few years. 
As expected once Christmas Day was out of the way there were a lot more anglers on the river.
The middle river especially received a lot of attention and when I turned up at the Stag car-park on Thursday I had to swing round and resort to Plan B because it was full.
Not surprisingly its been a funny ole week and there were times when you couldn’t buy a fish.
If you weren't catching it was a case of moving through stretches fairly quickly until you eventually found a few and hooked up.
P.T nymphs have been working well again and despite the fact this one looked as if I'd stomped on it with a hob-nail boot, it took four fish including a brown during one of the better sessions.  
The browns are really on the move now and there appear to be more around this year.
Most of the reports will have stories and pics of these awesome fish and I love catching them.
They fight differently to rainbow trout using their weight and brute strength to test your tackle to its limits. And although you don't often get the spectacular leaps and blistering first runs of a good rainbow you never know how they'll react when you hook a big one.
After you strike it often feels as if you've hooked the bottom but then "the bottom" begins to slowly gather speed as the fish stays deep and goes off on one of those unstoppable runs, either up ... across ... or downriver.
There's nothing you can do except hang on and chase after it hoping that it will turn so that you can get some line back on the reel.
At other times you can almost lead them like a dog into the shallows ... but don't get complacent because they can turn the tables in the blink of an eye if they want too.
 
Its that time of year again when fly fishermen turn their attention to the cicada and begin looking and listening out for any serious signs of an increase in this years brood numbers.
The warm humid weather leading up to Christmas saw noise levels begin to build and you could hear them all along the banks of the Tongariro. But the cooler showery stuff this past week has definitely slowed things down again.
What exactly triggers them to emerge en masse is still not fully understood but the two most important factors seem to be temperature and ground moisture content.
Last year we certainly had the hot weather that cicadas love but it went on and on, baking the ground rock hard. This probably made it difficult for the nymphs to leave their underground burrows and the emergence petered out.
The most recent studies show that the best conditions for significant numbers to appear are a constant soil temperature of at least 64 degrees centigrade a foot down, combined with light rain ... so keep your eyes and ears open if the mercury begins to climb again this week.
As a species cicadas have been around for a very long time ... over two hundred million years!
Compare this to Modern man who first appeared in Southern Africa a mere two hundred and fifty thousand years ago ... give or take a few thousand.
When I lived in the UK I was always under the impression that we didn’t have cicadas in Britain but it turns out that there is one species … the New Forest Cicada. The first recorded sightings were documented in 1812 but some think it may be close to extinction because there have been no confirmed sightings since the year 2000. The image above is from the web-site of the study group set up to promote awareness of the insects plight. www.newforestcicada.info
The name cicada comes directly from the Latin for “tree cricket” and their likenesses turn up in cultures right across the globe. You can find examples of cicadas … on carvings … jewellery …fabrics … coins and in the art and literature of countries from Greece to China.
Chinese emperors often kept cicadas in small cages so that they could be entertained by the insects song and even created a high profile position in the Imperial court whose job it was to catch cicadas and ensure the emperor didn't run out. In many countries this practice of keeping cicadas as pets still goes on to this day.
In rural parts of France one old myth suggests that cicadas were sent by God to increase productivity on the farms by preventing French peasants from sleeping during the day.
And the fact that only the males sing prompted one brave Greek poet to write " Blessed are the cicadas, for they have voiceless wives."
There are a few ways to distinguish males from females. The most obvious ... well ... just for once, if its making a racket, its definitely a bloke.
Because of the spear-like ovipositor which she uses to deposit her eggs the abdomen of a female looks much more pointed than that of the male.
And if you look at the underside of a male cicada, directly below its legs you'll see two plates {the operculum} which cover the chambers that contain the tymbals ... the organs that produce all the noise.
You can see them clearly in this close-up taken by Phil Bendle that feature on a web-site called Terrain. www.terrain.net.nz
The video clip below is from Sir David Attenborough's Life in the Undergrowth series and shows the emergence of the Magicada genus of periodical cicadas found in eastern North America.
I haven't tried them yet but those semi-realistic cicadas at the start of this piece are available from Creel Tackle Shop and Cafe. I'm not sure who makes them or how durable they are but they certainly look the part and even if the fish don't like them I bet they'll catch plenty of anglers ... be quick I hear they're selling like hot-cakes! ... I know ... but I couldn't resist it.
Things should be a little quieter this week.
Tight lines guys
Mike
UPDATE: Monday 6th January.
The river is still carrying some color after yesterdays unscheduled release but has dropped back to
" normal " levels and is currently around 28 cumecs. |
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