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Another cracking few days.
Sat 15th August, 2015
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   At the moment it doesn't seem to matter much where you are on the river, you should get into the action and land a few fish.
Greg Koppel {top}hooked up first cast and Dougal who was on vacation from Australia landed this good male fish from the same pool. It was his first time on the Tongariro but it didn't take him long to get the mend and drift right and once he did ... the takes kept coming.
There have been runs going through all week. My fishing barometer the Upper and Lower Bridge Pool has been spot on with a reading of between 16 and 18 anglers most days. Today when I drove past there were over twenty and they don't line up there for the view.  
Fishing news travels fast amongst the locals and when the fish are running it doesn't take long for the gauntlet to grow.
But there's a good spread of fish throughout the river now and I've fished from the Blue Pool down this week and had a lot of fun.
I was in the Blue Pool again yesterday with Mike and Mark and we hit fish straight away. My dog has taken a bit of a shine to Mike and likes to "help" him whenever he can. Mind you he's not short of victims lately.
The river is pretty busy on weekends and I think that reflects how good the fishing is at present. Its a long time since I've seen anglers parking up early in Herekiekie Street and hurrying along the access path through the grounds of Whitewater Lodge to get to they're favorite possie. But don't be put off. 
During the week finding some unoccupied water is no problem, especially if you're prepared to get away from the car parks.
On our way back from Big Bend yesterday Mark and I decided to drop onto one of the middle river pools ... not a soul. We had six hook-ups as the light began to fade, including the hen Mark is holding.
There were still fish moving through as we left and you could see the odd one porpoising as the pod made their way upriver.
I'm pretty sure Mike and Mark will be fishing the same stretch this morning. I'll be interested to know how they get on. They should do well especially if they get in there first. 
There have been some nice fish taken again this week and many anglers comment on how strong they are this year. If you hook up in faster water or if they get into fast water while you're playing them you can really have your hands full.
Just look at my reel after a blistering first run from a fish lying in the middle of the river at the Blue Pool.
I eventually managed to hand line some of it back to me. But when it took off downriver again with more acrobatics it was all over.
Some of the facts out there about Rainbow trout are incredible. I've mentioned this one before but they can accelerate from nothing to 37 kilometers an hour in about a second. No wonder my reel "blew up". I also mentioned how strong some of the fish seem to be.
Ron Newman in his article The Extraordinary Rainbow Trout writes:
"A trout of three pounds can easily break a leader tested to six-pound strength. That's double its body weight. I defy you to break, rather than cut, mono-filament tested to just your own body weight. Few members of the animal kingdom can accomplish this feat but some larger trout do this on a regular basis."
I realise there's a little more to it than that because you also have to factor in flow rate, how much line is out, how good your drag is, snags etc. But what happened to my neighbor Paul and I one morning illustrates this and I've heard dozens of similar stories this year. I had to use zoom for the shots so apologies but they're a little blurry.
Out of the first five hook ups I was snapped three times. I thought it might be my line, so upped the tippet to 8lb. Then Paul showed up and got busted off on his first rainbow as well. I don't know what he did when he re-rigged but ten minutes later he landed the one he's holding up and shouted over "it's a good fish". 
For the last few weeks I've been intending to include a pic of the insect life currently in the river. But every time I've picked up a rock or two and had a look, too be honest there hasn't been much on the underside worth photographing. Jared touched on this recently in his Sporting Life report. We get regular floods and freshes on the river all the time but this year we've had several in quick succession. Each time we get these higher flows it disturbs the river bed and turns over some of the rocks, small stones and debris that provides the habitat where nymphs and larvae thrive. Once dislodged they're at the mercy of the current and I guess most are either eaten or end up in the lake. I'm also surmising that a percentage make it back to the safety of the riverbed as the flows settle back. These provide the adult insects which make up the hatches later in the year. This can't be the first time this sequence of events has occurred but personally I don't think I've ever noticed so few around and it will be interesting to see how it affects the fishing during spring and summer. I'm still getting a few fish on naturals, mostly small PT's or flashbacks but globugs are definitely the most consistent "fly" at the moment. I haven't caught anywhere near as many fish this winter on caddis as I have in past years. If the caddis population has been knocked about a bit it could be there's not enough of them in the river to condition the fish into taking them. I'll tell you for certain as soon as I catch that talking trout.
Tight lines guys
Mike
As a footnote I heard fom Mike today. They spent the morning on the same stretch of the middle river and landed ten between them. |
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