Fishing Reports

Several insect species that make up the main food source for trout over the summer have made a brief but welcome appearance over the past few weeks.  Cicadas and crickets have been heard on sunny days in areas where they have been sheltered from the cool sou-west wind that we have been experiencing. 

Once the wind swings to the North we should see a huge increase in the number of these insects, which trout just love to eat.  Last summer I saw literally thousands of tiny crickets on the surface of Lake Rotorua and trout were having a feast virtually all day.  For those who are not confident in using a cricket dry fly imitation, a size 14 or 16 unweighted black nymph which is allowed to drift on the surface of the water will do.

Even allowing the nymph to sink slowly works, as many of the baby crickets end up under the surface tension, particularly if there are any waves on the lake. Stream fishing, using cicada or cricket imitations, can also be very productive and there is nothing like watching your dry fly drift down the current and seeing a trout come up and take it. 

With Lake Rotorua’s water temperature swinging between 16.5 and 17 degrees C trout refuse to come into the cooler water at Hamurana and the Awahou in any great numbers.  What we need is a wind shift to the North so that the lake will arm up to the required temperature for trout to move into cooler water.  It was great to watch a hen, attended by several jacks, digging a redd just inside the mouth of the Hamurana Stream.

This late attempt at spawning is good news for this lake as any progeny that survives will come back around the same time of the year to attempt to do the same. Dragonfly nymphs seem to tempt other rainbows to feed in the main pool just inside the mouth. Use a sinking line and slowly retrieve the nymph along the bottom along the edge of the main current line. 

Brown trout are still moving into the Ngongotaha and Waiteti streams though they are not hanging around the lower reaches. Fishing between 11pm and midnight and 5 am to 7 am has been more productive as there has been little rain to entice fish to come into the river in the early part of the evening. 

Standard orange egg patterns have taken rainbows, though the green with an orange spot egg pattern has been reasonably successful for brown trout during the hours of daylight. After dark, large black woolly buggers and grey ghosts gave caught fish, when these flies are fished close to the bank, on the outside of a sweeping bend in the river.

Fishing the mouth of the Ngongotaha Stream has been successful for some over the past week. Should the wind die away in the evenings there should be a fairly active hatch of insects and there should be plenty of fish feeding on the insects at the mouth. The rain that is forecast for tomorrow (Thursday) should bring both rainbows and browns into the river. 

Some spectacular rainbows came out of Lake Rotoiti during the recent International Trout Fishing Competition. The colour of the flesh bordered on crimson and contained a large amount of oil, showing that these fish have plenty of the right food. One angler that I know of averaged 10 fish per day over the three days, the largest was a shade under the magical 4.5kg. 

Most were caught by jigging from a drifting boat off the Hauparu drop-off, though some have been caught off Westbank ,Vercoes and points closer to the Hinehopu end of the lake, when the wind allows. The water temperature range of Lake Rotoiti is between 13.5 and 15.5 degrees C, though the surface temperature can be up to 17 degrees on a sunny but wind free day. 

Lake Rotoehu ranges in temperature between 16 and 18 degrees C so if you know of any streams entering this lake, they will be an almost certain bet to hold trout at their mouth. Careful stalking to the mouth of any stream, especially with the small inflows into Lake Rotoehu, is very important as any fish there will be easily spooked into deeper water due to the shallow nature of the lake edge. After dark fish will come right into the small drop-off, usually less than 30cm high, so stand a couple of rod lengths back from the lake edge where possible.