Lake Tarawera - fishing spots and best times to fish

The Rotorua region boasts an impressive thirteen lakes, but Lake Tarawera is considered by many to be the best of them all.

Sure, everyone has their favourite, and it would be fair to suggest locals are spoilt for choice, with some of the Rotorua lakes providing solitude, while others are known for their trophy-sized fish, high catch rate, or easy access. Each to their own, but few would disagree, Tarawera really is a special place to chase rainbow trout.

Located centrally among the group of Rotorua lakes, Tarawera is close to the city, but offers a peacefulness second only to Lake Okataina. It’s a relatively large body of water with a surface area of 41 square kilometres.

The main body of the lake is somewhat pear-shaped, with a long narrowing arm to Te Tapahoro Bay in the east, where the lake’s water exits via the Tarawera River. To the north, Humphries Bay and the Otumutu Lagoon Bay areas provide great fishing and shelter from northerly winds. The Ariki Arm to the south is a popular location as it contains the famous Hotwater Beach, where weary fishers or holiday makers can relax after a hard day on the lake.

Access for boaties is either from the west, from any one of four ramps, or at the outlet in the east through permitted forest land.

Tarawera has excellent water quality, an average depth of 50 metres, and is 88 metres at its deepest point. Surface water temperatures range from 11 degrees Celsius in the winter to around 22°C in summer. The lake contains rainbow trout only, of which about 70% come from Fish & Game’s hatchery at Ngongotaha, with the remaining 30% the result of wild spawning. Recognised for their quality, Lake Tarawera trout actually provide brood stock for the hatchery’s big fish programme, and these fish go on to not only re-stock Tarawera, but all of the Rotorua lakes.

As with Rotoiti and Okataina, the Tarawera season kicks off on October 1, although the festivities begin the evening before at The Landing with the historic haggis piping and blessing of the boats ceremony.

During this early-season period and while the water remains cool, the trout are well spread through the lake and can be found at most depths. Juvenile smelt shoal in their masses, providing forage food for hungry young trout. Shallow trolling or harling in close to the shore or at the drop-offs works well, and my favourite rig is a bright coloured Tassie – say fluoro pink, green or orange – and a smelt-fly combination on one or two colours of lead line.

Heave and Leave, a method of casting a floating Glo-bug on a sinking flyline or on spinning tackle using a sinker, can work well at this time of year too, and the narrows at Red Beach and the southern and western shores are good places to start.

As the season warms over summer, you’ll need to start thinking like a trout and know that water temperature dictates how they behave. Fishing at relatively shallow depths will work, but only early in the morning and late in the evenings, when trout naturally go on the hunt. Simply put, cooler water exists at depth, and the trout much prefer this habitat, so try fishing deeper using more colours of lead, wire lines, downriggers or by jigging.

If equipped with a temperature gauge and sounder, use them! When the surface water is touching 20 degrees and all the fish you see on the sounder are at 15 metres, there’s no point trolling with a fly-line or a couple of colours of lead line (trolled lead line sinks to about 1.5 metres per colour). Always figure out where the trout are and make an effort to get your line to them, as they won’t move up or down to take your offerings.

Lure selection is a debate easily entered into with lake anglers; each and every one has his/her pet theories about which works best. While surveying for Fish & Game, I often ask successful anglers what they are using, and most are happy to tell me. Interestingly, when the fish are ‘on the bite’ they take everything, from the old faithful black and gold Toby to almost any colour Tassie Devil. At other times you’ll swear there are no fish in the lake, and it might be worth considering lure size as much as lure colour.

During the early and late part of the season young smelt are present, and trout can be focussed on slightly smaller food types, while at other times much bigger adult smelt are the main food source for trout, so bigger flies or lures work better. One successful jig fisher I know uses an oversize Woolly Bugger fly on the bottom to simulate a big XOS koura or bully.

Autumn for boaties, and winter for the hardy shore-based fly fishers (the lake closes on June 30 to all boat fishing), is the time when the lake gives up its biggest fish. With a growth rate of about a millimetre per day in their first year, well-fed trout reach superb condition just prior to spawning in their third or fourth season. Boat-fishing methods continue to work, but wise anglers are well advised to focus their attention near the liberation areas.

Shore-based fly-fishing comes into its own from April through July, with the area around The Landing, Te Wairoa and Rangiuru Bay good starting points. Wet, cold, really horrid weather, or cold, dark moonless nights fire-up the mature Tarawera trout, so come well prepared. Floating or slow-sink lines and lumo Doll flies at night, or flies with a flash of pink or red and attached to a stout length of tippet, are ideal.

With a stunning vista dominated by Mount Tarawera, clear waters and world-class trout, it’s no wonder that Lake Tarawera has a reputation as ‘the’ Rotorua lake!

	This article is reproduced with permission of New Zealand Fishing News 2009 Re-publishing elsewhere is prohibited