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Rain on the way.
Wed 25th May, 2011
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Update Saturday 28th May 4.00am. The Tongariro looks to have peaked at 390 cumecs and is now flowing at 44.5 cumecs. This will get the fish moving and anglers traveling up should have a ball over the next few days. It wouldn't surprise me to see some really good fish caught this weekend. Load up the truck guys...I'll see you out there.
Earlier in the week I spent a morning on the river with Kent Price the owner of the Bridge Motel who had suddenly decided to dust off his fly gear and leaky waders for the first time in five years.
Patrons of "the Bridge" will recognize him as the smiling face who has been greeting customers there for the last six months. Kent his partner Lyn together with their new management team and staff have been working hard to restore this well known Turangi motel to its former glory.They are obviously doing a great job because already the locals are regularly using the bar and restaurant which is always a good sign.
If ever you walk into the restaurant, on your left you’ll notice a very eye-catching silver trophy depicting a leaping rainbow. Years ago this was presented to the winner of the Bridge Lodge Fishing Competition but as far as I know there is only one name on it dated 1986. Kent has decided to resurrect this prestigious event and fisho’s who stay at his establishment will be eligible to enter any fish caught during their time there.
I should have guessed something was up when he started plying me with drink as I was tucking in to my "bangers and chips with onion gravy". Before I knew it I had agreed to take him to my favorite brown trout possie so that the crafty bugger could have a chance of winning his own trophy!
Anyway his sneaky plan back-fired and all he ended up with was a baby brown…sorry mate.
The next couple of days were divided between the Town, the lower river as far as Delatours and a short session in the middle reaches above Stag which was far to busy for me and I didn't stay long. 
I had some decent trout around the Reed stretch but despite fishing hard the rest of the time further down turned out to be just a pleasant walk. There is some really fishy looking water in this part of the river and if previous years are any thing to go by it won’t be long before it starts producing especially when using globugs.
On the weekend the river was fairly busy with anglers chasing last weeks small runs of browns and rainbows that had raced through to the middle and upper river and most of the car parks were occupied. There were a few of these "new" browns up to six pounds caught around the Bridge Pool. I expect there are still more to come but we must have reached the peak of their runs by now. Although I remember a fat silver hen last year that was caught at the end of June and we nick-named “Miss Piggy”
I didn’t spend much time there but if you were first “in” then Judges was ok and the same applied to the Braids . Best flies for me were medium size orange glo bugs, rubber leg prince nymph or green caddis.
The term “green caddis” is used by anglers to cover both net-building and free swimming varieties found in the river. To get the best results fish imitations tied with plenty of segmentation which mimic the natural more closely and use them in the oxygen rich riffles and fast runs that they prefer. I think I’ve mentioned it before but at times there can be so many of them in the river that your flies will occasionally snag them off the bottom during a drift.
It looks as if we could be in for a good dump of rain from Thursday into Friday and if it floods depending on levels the weekend should see anglers getting stuck in to some fresh fish. Weekdays angling numbers are still low but this will slowly begin to pick up as the fishing continues to improve. I've already noticed that Tongariro "regulars" are expressing an optimism that perhaps hasn’t been there for the last couple of years.
Its looking good guys
Mike |
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