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Plenty of fish around for the school holidays.
Thu 24th September, 2015
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Another couple of weeks of great fishing on the Tongariro. Things have slowed down a little bit ... but the fish keep coming and there's plenty of them in the river as we head towards the school holidays.
A lot of the locals continue to target the Bridge Pool and there's no doubt you will catch fish there, especially early in the day ... but its not for me.
I haven't spent too much time around town recently, preferring instead to fish upriver where its usually quieter. I say usually because just before the schools break up there are normally less anglers around. That's been the case ...but everyone had the same idea and whatever time of day you drove up there its been rare to find any of the upper river car-parks entirely empty.
Most of the time the fish are still near the bottom but things will change as the weather warms up and insect activity increases.
In the meantime gold-heads and other weighted patterns like Quasimodo's, Cadillac's and BH rubber leg flies are still taking fish and so are those small jelly eggs I mentioned a while back.
This particular type of egg pattern has proved quite useful this year especially once the fish have got past the town pools. By then they've had enough of yarn globugs and these look more like the real thing.
When the fish leave the lake and enter the rivers to spawn further upstream, its not long before they encounter fly fishermen. Like other Taupo fly fishing tributaries the Tongariro is open all year round and as soon as they're within casting range they get all kinds of things hurled at them on a daily basis. I don't know how many "artificial's" drift past them during their lives but they must see an awful lot of anglers flies.
  Whether its down to curiosity, aggression, hunger or whatever, sometimes they can resist no longer and they'll decide to "take" one of these flies.
For many of them, that's it and from then on, all they have to look forward too is a date with a knife and fork. The lucky ones will get away or be returned to fight another day. A percentage of fish will get caught more than once.
I'm sure some of you will have occasionally landed a trout with someone else's fly in its mouth. I recall a fish in `the "Stones" stretch of the Braids several winters ago that I caught and released a number of times. This male trout had a distinctive mark on its flank and was probably defending a spawning area. The act of reproducing takes its toll on trout especially the jacks. As the days passed each time I caught it you could see the gradual decline in its overall condition. This went on for a couple of weeks ... not every day ... but as my flies probably weren't the only ones it jumped on, Christ knows how many times it got hooked!
I also remember reading about a tagged fish that was caught multiple times while it was in a river. I can't recollect exactly how many but I think it was over a dozen.
Must have been a slow learner with a death wish!
Thankfully the vast majority of fish don't impale themselves on our flies or we'd very quickly get bored and have a river with no fish in it. So if you're a beginner, have realistic expectations when you arrive at the waters edge. If you think you're just going to chuck it out there and haul in fish after fish, that ain't gonna happen. Tongariro trout are sometimes fairly kind to anglers but as I mentioned in the last report you have to get a few basics right. And don't forget the longer the fish are in the river the more important this becomes.
During the winter runs this is particularly true when angling pressure is high. The longer they're subjected to constant angler attention the more wary and stressed they become.
When the river is busy I try and stay away from stretches that are being hammered day in day out and look for quieter water in between. May be the cast is a bit awkward or its a place that's difficult to access. There are dozens of places along the river that fly fishermen walk straight past just because you can't fish them with an indicator!
Anglers who adapt and change tack a little when it gets tough generally do better.
I doubt there's anywhere on the Tongariro that hasn't been fished by someone at some time or other, but there are definitely places that aren't fished as often.
  When you find a "quiet" spot make it easy for the fish to believe its safe to eat your fly.
Approach the area carefully ... after all the fish are probably there in the first place to avoid people like you and me.
Make those first few casts really count.
May be go for a lighter tippet or leader.
If its a shallow stretch do you really need the indicator?
There's more than one way to fish a nymph so don't be afraid to experiment.
If you need too, play around with weight, fly choice and size.
The reason the fish take those small jelly eggs with such confidence, is because they look and feel right. Trout can reject a fly in an instant if it suspects something is wrong. But these seem to work well when they're ignoring more traditional egg patterns.
The advances in modern photographic technology and of course computers has provided much more accurate and sophisticated information for those who study trout behavior. As a result some of the "facts" that wwere previously taken as read have been disproved. Have a read of this article, it deals mainly with the way fish take a dry fly but there's some interesting stuff here Coping with Rejection ... no wonder we miss a few!
Occasionally during the runs when angling pressure is at its highest I get a spate of botched hookups when I'm nymphing.
It usually happens when I'm fishing three flies and the fish ends up hooked in the tail or dorsal fin.
I think what may be happening is that the fish are picking up the bomb or middle fly. The indicator registers the take but because the fish are a little more wary they quickly reject the nymph. Then, when the fish reacts to the strike it gets caught up on the bottom fly.
Of course this is all guesswork because unlike dry fly fishing most of the time we're nymphing "blind" and don't actually see the fish "eat" the fly.
Over time you learn to mentally visualize whats happening below the surface which in turn helps you fish the flies more effectively. Another thing that happens when trout are exposed to long periods of constant angling pressure is the "takes" become more difficult to spot. By the time the fish get to the middle and upper stretches they're a bit more river savvy. There are times now when the takes are so subtle the indicator hardly moves, never mind goes under. Sometimes the only giveaway that a fish has intercepted the nymph is a slight slowing or sideways movement. Other times it just doesn't look right. If the indicator does anything during a drift that it didn't do during previous drifts ... strike! ... you may be surprised ...
 
A lot more spent fish showing up now but some of the male fish I've been getting upriver have been in great shape and always look fantastic when they take on their spawning colors.
They fight like tigers and will sometimes jump you all over the pool. One angling author described them " as the trout on the flying trapeze". I've caught a lot of jacks lately and you often see some big male fish turn up during September.
The weather is still all over the place but on milder days we've had some mayfly hatches. They didn't last long but were soon spotted by the fan-tails and swallows along the river.
Its been a lot colder for longer this year but I'm beginning to get a few fish on the other rod now.
Looks unsettled again for the start of the holidays and the rest of next week but they've been way off with the forecast a few times this week.
I was hoping to fit in some other stuff but its getting late ... so time for bed.
Tight lines guys
Mike |
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