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Not all four pounders.
Fri 28th October, 2011
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Anglers have taken the odd good fish as the runs have continued this week. They are still flying through but the kelts that eat anything resembling food are every where and its been a lot of fun catching them. If your prepared to set the alarm to be out and about at dawn being first through will usually pay off and you won't go far wrong using globugs if there are also fresh fish around.
  Andrew Watt who normally fishes and guides in the Manawatu got these early in one of the town pools. I stayed on a bit longer changing methods as soon as the fan-tails made an appearance.
Its uncanny how these birds can preempt that first big mayfly hatch around 11.00 am. By fishing emergers I took some nice fish before I left, keeping one for the smoker. In the afternoons I seem to end up in the Braids and by then its almost deserted so you have the pick of the spots. If your lucky you may knock off a few fresh fish as they pass through but most of the possies will be holding trout of some description. In the clear conditions scale everything down and I've done ok using lighter tippet and size 16 nymphs below caddis emerger patterns. The price you pay is that you will lose fish occasionally, twice this week I've been busted. A couple of better rainbows have come from the very bottom of the Lower Bridge quite late in the afternoon. They took small pink globugs following the tried and tested "bugs early and late" formula. This color has worked well for a while, Paul Anderson who I fished with recently had a great time using very little else for his four days on the river. 
I spent a couple of mornings upriver at the start of the week checking things out. The weather was beautiful with no wind for a change and hardly anyone around. There were several fish lined up along the TLB of Duchess but they were pretty spooky and wanted nothing to do with me or my flies. I met a couple of guys who had fished further up and they had also found things tough. If you don't mind some company the Troll's Pool is still worthwhile especially for the early birds. This pool is always one of the hot-spots during the spawning runs but quite why the trout hold here is still a bit of a mystery. It obviously has something to do with the bridge itself and everyone has a theory ... lights ... vibration ... shadow, its probably a combination of all of them. You can imagine how a rainbow trout fresh from the wide open space of the lake would react when suddenly confronted with this huge dark shape above it. Factor in the noise and vibration traveling through the water as traffic continually thunders over it, little wonder they hesitate. Trout have inner ears located near the base of their skulls and can hear sound in much the same way as humans. They can't pick up human conversation because its outside their frequency range but they can hear and "feel" the thud of heavy foot-fall etc. These inner ears contain the otoliths { ear stones } small pebble like objects that are suspended in a fluid filled chamber which is lined with tiny hairs. This aids a trouts balance and keeps it upright. When the fish is swimming normally the otoliths rest at the bottom of the inner ear putting pressure on the hair-like sensors which send a signal to the brain telling it all is well. If for some reason the trout finds itself upside down the ear stones make contact with the hairs at the top of the chamber and the trout will immediately right itself. Compared to using its scales the otoliths are invaluable for those who study fish because they are a far more accurate way of ageing them. The big draw back is you would have to kill the fish first.
By extracting them and slicing off thin sections biologists are able to examine them under a microscope and count the annual growth rings,
a bit like that of a tree. The other important sensory organ is the lateral line which extends from behind the skull to the tail on both sides of a fishes body. This helps a trout to feel sound and is made up of a series of U shaped tubes located just under the scales. When ever a sound travels through water it causes a vibration which is detected by a minute hair at the base of each U.  These in turn send a signal back to the brain which decodes the information and tells the trout where that vibration originated. This helps a fish to detect prey items and stay safe from possible predators and other danger. There is some research that suggests brown trout may be more tolerant of noise and vibration disturbance than other salmonids. For instance while underwater piling was being carried out in Southampton Water on the South Coast of England in 2003 they studied brown trout kept in cages at varying distances from the piling work. Their intention was to study the effect of unusually high noise levels on salmon but none were easily available.
Of all the trout examined not one of them was found to have any ill effects because of exposure to this noise and there was no increase in their activity or startle response. I wonder if this is why the browns that migrate up the Tongariro generally seem quite happy to pass under the bridge or just use it as convenient cover no matter what time of day it is. Eventually of course the rainbows have to move too, perhaps most of this happens at night when there is less traffic noise. Where ever you are, if you have a bridge over water, fish won't be far away. Its a fact that they are attracted to structure man-made or otherwise but in this case I don't believe its the reason as far as the rainbows are concerned.
At the end of the day its just another guess to add to the list and I bet the regulars who enjoy fishing there don't care why they hold, as long as they keep on doing it. We've had bits and pieces of rain the last couple of days and the forecast looks unsettled. There are plenty of fish around but don't expect them all to be fresh four pounders. There have been a few good fish caught but I've also been catching some real little fella's washed down after the last fresh. Try the riffles and runs rather than the pools I'm sure you'll have a ball.
Be lucky guy's
Mike. |
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