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The Gauntlet and the Glove.
Mon 1st May, 2017
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After heavy overnight rain and showers during the weekend, the Tongariro peaked at fifty plus cumecs. Its since dropped back to 38 cumecs with a hint of color. The remaining showers are forecast to clear throughout the day with cooler south to south west winds gradually picking up.
The river looks great but there weren't too many anglers out and about this morning, mind you that cold gusty southerly had a lot to do with that.
The Bridge pool has been getting its fair share of attention for most of the week and talking to some of the guys making up "the gauntlet" on Saturday they told me they'd had a pretty good morning.
 The last few days I've seen quite a few jacks getting caught although others are reporting they're catching lots of fresh run hens carrying immature eggs.
As Michelle explained in a report last May ...
"Fish need to reach maturity before spawning and maturity is triggered by several factors. Growth is an obvious one, when fish grow quickly they will spawn earlier. If they don’t grow quickly they will “wait” longer in the lake before running trying to maximize the output of eggs. However, at some stage there is a trade-off between growing further with the risk of mortality and running a bit smaller. This is also when the sexual hormones cycles controlled by temperature, day length and also fat content become the dominant trigger. But just like humans fish need some fat to metabolize hormones and again if the growing conditions are not right this will affect the maturity.
There are also environmental triggers.
In the Tongariro our radio-tracking experiments indicated that the early spawning fish that entered the river in a premature state of maturation with eggs not in the advanced stage of development (vitellogenesis) reacted strongly to freshes to move upstream. But then often stopped when conditions returned to normal, milling around in the same pool for long periods until the next fresh, when they pushed further on.
During this early phase of the run some fish can take as much as 89 days to move from the Delta to the Waipa Stream.
Interestingly these fish are often really nervous and hard to catch having something else on their mind than just grabbing a nymph!"
 
At present it still pays to keep on the move until you find some fish. Fish have been trickling through for weeks but as we head towards winter the numbers of fish "running" will inevitably increase.
Although anglers fishing the Tongariro recently have mostly been picking up early running, smaller rainbows, reports from the lake indicate that better fish are not far away.
I fished with Mike and his daughter Jess midweek and a couple of the jacks caught were pretty good fish. They weren't huge and we had to work a bit for them but nearly all of them were in great condition and fought well.
As you know, Mike is a bit of a "gadgeteer". If anything new comes on the market to enhance the fishing experience Mike will usually give it a try.
Grant at Creel tackle is also aware of this and recently conned him into trialing this new glove ... supposedly to aid the unhooking of fish.
Well ... his first impressions are extremely favourable. Mike says "he loves the feel and look of the fabric and it definitely improves his grip on anything slippery." In fact he liked it so much that on a recent trip to Amsterdam he managed to track down the complete winter collection of a similar product. So... when you see him on the river ... underneath his "out there doing it" shirt and expensive waders, he's rugged up with a fishnet peep-hole vest and matching open crotch long johns!
 
So not a particularly easy week on the river ... but enough going on to keep things interesting.
I've found the upper river in particular a bit slow. But its early days and there isn't a consistent spread of fish yet.
Green caddis has again been working well but as things continue to cool down and more spawning fish enter the river, insect activity will decrease and more eggs will enter the drift, then globugs will come into their own.
Bits and pieces of rain forecast for the week ahead and with flows near the thirties fish should keep coming.
Keep an eye on the flows because I was standing in the middle of the river one day last week {well before the rain} and felt the current getting stronger. Sure enough when I got back and checked the graph it had spiked sharply earlier in the day for no apparent reason.
The lower river should be a good bet now. But if you want to be virtually guaranteed a fish and aren't bothered by the scenery, get into the Bridge Pool early.
Current Flow Information
Tight Lines
Mike |
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