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The boys are back in town!
Sat 11th August, 2018
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Wonderful Spring-like temperatures in Turangi the last day or two with very little wind. Combine that with all day sunshine and its little wonder thousands of recreational visitors flocked to the area over the weekend. The ski slopes and rivers have been extremely busy and when I got on the Tongariro early yesterday morning the Braids was already filling up fast.
Luckily my "Braids fishing buddy" Norman was already in the spot and after starting further down first, I gradually moved up and joined him.
I was just in time because he was playing fish number four as I approached and after a pretty good scrap I slipped the net under the cracking two kilo plus hen pictured above.
Things slowed down a little after that and it wasn't until Norm was wading back across the river to drop his wife off at the bus-stop that I hooked my first...a dark coloured jack.
This stretch hash't been this busy for quite some time. With anglers criss-crossing the river at regular intervals during the couple of hours I spent there.
 
Before I left Des Armstrong turned up. If you were lucky enough to attend the excellent Creel / Vision Tackle sponsored nymphing clinic a month or two back you'll recall Des was one of the expert anglers who participated in the presentation and instructed that day.
Anyway with more and more anglers turning up at the Braids and the usual mid-morning slow down in the "fishing"... we decided to make a move to some quieter water upriver. We spent 90 mins or so up there and had a few fish on small nymphs. But most were kelts in various stages of recovery ...which seems to sum up what anglers have been experiencing lately.
This is another spot that often goes off the boil after you take five or six fish. So as soon as that happened we trekked back to the cars.
Des was keen to try some water around town and I headed back over to Herekiekie Street for my afternoon session at the Braids.
The whole place was still dotted with anglersI but eventually I managed to get at my usual spot.
As you'd expect with so many fly-fishers in town it had been thrashed. But even so it will still produce a few fish late in the afternoon ... and thats how it panned out.
I hadn't been there long when it suddenly went dark and the unmistakable silhouette of North Shore Fly-fishers Duncan Frew appeared on the opposite bank ... accompanied by fellow club member and vet Andrew. After pushing me off my spot it wasn't long before they hooked up and Duncan insisted I only got his best side when taking the photographs. I tried ...but after travelling all around him this was the best I could come up with!
 
So one of the busiest weekends I've seen for a while on the Tongariro. But I think most anglers reported catching something. A lot of kelts in the mix now and from memory its unusual to see so many at this time of year. However there's still plenty of better fish amongst them as well.
With so many anglers in town and one or two big club events taking place I'll give it a miss today and get the mower out instead.
Rain and showers for the next couple of days but they've already downgraded the forecast and it doesn't look as if we're going to get the amounts they initially predicted.
Tight lines
Mike |
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