Fishing Reports

Firstly - sorry for the lack of report of late.... been too busy fishin'! As my 06 guiding season draws to a close, I finally get time to get amongst it myself and chase the monster double figure trout that abound at this time of year. It's ironic really, the angling tourists have all but disappeared, and yet NOW is the time when one is most likely to nail themselves that trophy trout of a lifetime, with both huge rainbows and browns readily available to the flyfishing angler.

Having said that - we've had regular encounters with big browns since mid-December.... and with seventeen double figure trout banked since then, it confirms, in my mind at least, that we probably have the best trophy trout fishery on the planet today. With #17 landed just yesterday (I'll try and get some pix up here for you), it's all go in the Bay of Plenty, with the Rotorua feeder streams the pick at the moment.

Of course the other trophy fishery that comes into play at present are the Rotorua Lakes..... Okataina, Tarawera, Rotoiti et al. I've spent a fair few evenings and days sussing out the potential of the lakes for this winter, and there is no doubt in my mind that the pick of the bunch for sheer fish size is Lake Rotoiti. We took four fish there recently in a short evening with the smallest weighing 9lb and the largest taking the spring down to nearly 13 lb's! We were testing a theory that the trout would take a large floating glo-bug after dark, with no lumo in the equation at all. It's safe to say they do, and I fished mine with a slow retrieve so I had something to do!

Whilst Rotoiti is your best bet for a double figure fish, it has been a lot slower than many of the other lakes, and these fish don't seem to give quite as good an account of themselves than say a four pounder out of Lake Okareka. One thing that has made the fishing hard at the popular spots like Ruato and the Dump has been sheer angler numbers. With 15 lines slashing the water at Ruato some nights, the fish will simply not come in. Stealth is still important, obviously!

The recent full moon has also made the winter shoreline fishing tougher than usual, and I was chatting to one guy who'd put in fifteen hours over three nights for zero strikes. I'm led to believe that Lake Okataina is the better prospect during and after the full moon, with a small lumo doll fly.

Lake Tarawera has been unusually kind to me over the last month. We had two days there in the torrential rain where literally every cast picked up a fish (some 60 over the 2 days).... it was exceptional, and I have to say that the quality of the fish is at the top of the Lakes' list. Perfect silver 5-7lb crackers that put up a right royal riot on the end of ones line.  So whilst Rotoiti is the pick for size, Tarwera is definitely the leader for quality trout this season - however a redeeming session at Okareka recently (after getting skunked there on the full moon) proved these fish to be of exceptional quality as well, however a little smaller than the Tarawera stock.

It is now less than two weeks before most of the streams and lakes in the BOP close for their winter solace.... If shoreline lake flyfishing at night is not your thing then you could do far worse than to take a close look at the Ngongotaha or Utuhina streams right now. There are some real whoppers in these small creeks, however you're unlikely to enjoy success with them unless you load up and specifically devote the day to hunting them. It's so easy to get sidetracked by the squillions of 3-5lb rainbows in there, yet one must ignore these little peawhackers in the quest for a serious tackle tester. Try just walking the banks until such a double figure fish is sighted, then back off, tackle up with a fine diameter 20lb tippet, a very strong nymph, and target it with sincere stealth. You're kidding yourself if your weapon of choice is the latest and greatest 5/6 weight outfit. A minimum 8weight is needed or you'll get busted to pieces. It's rough country in there and one needs good brakes to put any heat on a monster brown when hooked. The beauty of 20lb tippet is that when these rogues bury you in the willow snags, and they always will, one can have a breather, suss out how to free the snag, then resume the battle again with much less chance of the tippet snapping. 8lb is simply a waste of your and the fishes time and energy - bottom line!

I was recently given a new prototype CD rod to trial on these double figure beasts with the instruction to try and break it! It's a slim profile, thick walled construction with a much slower action than most modern rods these days. You see I was complaining to the boys at CD that, in my opinion, for shortline techniques (which are so much a part of fishing in the willow infested Ngongotaha) the fast action rods don't have the "touch" required to put a large nymph on the "on" button at twelve feet. They are also too easy to snap in half!  A slow action rod is perfect for such tricky flickery, where short roll casts, flat flicks and bow and arrow casts are par for course - heck I even handcast to several fish yesterday! All the technology in the world has no place in these "tight" circumstances whereas a floppy noodle is simply perfect. One also has more control when the rod levels out at the cork whilst fighting a huge fish as well.... with the angle of line basically coming from the first knuckle. It's the difference between fighting a fish from a handline as opposed to from the top of a pole. A slow action rod is also far less likely to break, either upon the heavy strike needed to stun such fish or as one threads it around trees, flax and willow snags in the heat of the fight.

After some time spent hunting for worthy adversaries to test this new concept CD rod on I'm pleased to say that she's passed with flying colours, and if ever a rod was going to fall to pieces it would have been yesterday during a serious stomping match with that huge brown Jack which put us through all the paces in his dirty repertoire of filthy tactics. However, whilst I couldn't break this rod on a trophy fish, I'm still not entirely convinced that the designers have entirely relinquished their addiction to fast actions - as whilst the top third of the rod folds away with the roll of the wrist and the slightest push, the lower two thirds are still pretty stiff. Still, I suppose if I did need the power on the Lakes later that night to fire a long line - it was there, and had the trout been 23lb's instead of only 15lb, then I may have been a little less picky about it!

Well - it's all on out there. I'll be at Okataina tomorrow night (wed) to try and pick out a few good conditioned ones from the mainly skinny pack of 60 odd fish cruising the shore in there at present.    

Miles Rushmer