Trout - Fishing the Twin Kaweka Lakes

New Zealand and big brown trout are synonymous but as James Fuller tramped along a meandering forest path in the middle of nowhere with a baby strapped to his back, he was on a quest for small ones.

Why do we fish and why does it matter? It’s a question which has inspired books and the response will differ depending on who you ask. For many, at least part of it is about connection; connection to something, somewhere, or someone. And that can encompass memories, places, landscapes, experiences, people, and times long since passed.

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Growing up as one of three boys in rural east England, our family spent many summer holidays bundling up the car and heading north on epic journeys to Scotland, seeking brown trout on remote lochs of the rawest beauty. Those car rides often exceeded nine hours and, in a world before Google Maps, provided ample navigational challenges for Mum as chief map reader and co-pilot. Once, on a single-lane road that seemed to be petering out unpromisingly, we stopped to ask a local for directions to our holiday cottage. The man had seemingly been waiting for this opportunity his whole life as – all extravagant hand gestures, eyebrow raises and rollercoaster intonation – he launched into a jabbering and lengthy instruction in a thick, impenetrable Scotch accent. At least it was impenetrable to the three bobbing heads in the back, but Dad was evidently dealing with the whole thing manfully, nodding perceptively and murmuring agreeably, before a heartfelt, “Thank you so much, very kind, couldn’t have found it without you,” and pulling away with a wave of the deepest gratitude. “Well?” said mum. “Haven’t got a clue,” replied dad. “Didn’t understand a word.”

The whole thing was an adventure and the names of lochs such as Laidon, Rannoch, and Knockie, are as evocative now as they were then. Being Scotland, there were plenty of horizontal rain days, but my memory favours those with fat clouds keeping the sun at bay and a light breeze ruffling the water’s surface. Dad would row us boys tirelessly around with lines trailing behind the boat, the serenity of being out there broken only by the slow creaking of oars in rowlocks and peat-stained water lapping the bow. Periodically a brownie would obligingly attach itself to our flies and be hauled from its watery domain before being plopped back again wondering what the heck just happened. Barely ever breaking a pound, these golden-bellied fish, vividly marked with red and black spots, were objects of wonder in a young boy’s eyes.

Those memories are decades old, and life has since taken its own meandering path before landing me in New Zealand. Aotearoa has trout, of course, lots of them. And if you believe all you see on social media, the majority are monsters. The reality is somewhat different but nevertheless, the average size is undeniably solid. So, when I got wind of a couple of North Island hill lakes stocked with Loch Leven brownies over a century ago, and that today average less than a pound, my mind began to race. It was time to pack up my family for our own epic journey.

A five-hour drive took us down to Taihape and then onto the romantically named ‘Gentle Annie’ road, to what would be our camping spot for the night at Kuripapango. The Gentle Annie snakes a path up into the heights of the Kaweka Range, part of the North Island’s mountainous spine. This is hill farming country – rugged land for rugged people, segmented by fence lines crisscrossing the grassy gradients. It’s high summer and farmers are out baling hay for winter beneath powder-blue skies and a burning sun. 

At Kuripapango we find a clearing in a stand of trees to pitch our tent and, leaving the fly sheet off, gaze up through the insect mesh at a sky so full of stars you have to track from side to side to absorb it all. I honestly haven’t got the faintest clue when it comes to stars, but you don’t always have to understand to appreciate beauty. Idyllic setting or not, it’d be stretching a point to claim three people on an inflatable mattress – one of whom is a sharp-elbowed, hard-kicking toddler – affords a restful night’s sleep. Regardless, D-day had arrived: destination Twin Lakes.

Baby onboard, fly rods in hand, off to the lake we go.

Baby onboard, fly rods in hand, off to the lake we go.

A short drive along the highway and then onto a gravel logging road leaves us with a 30-minute bushwalk to the lakes. With Alfie strapped to my back, Zipporah and I stroll through the Kanuka forest with Bush Robbins, Fantails, and Tūi keeping us company and a cicada-soundtrack buzzing in the background. It’s a lovely walk through regenerating native woodland but, honestly, I’m already thinking about the trout at the end of it.

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The Twin Lakes (also known as the Kaweka or Kuripapango Lakes) were formed thousands of years ago when a massive slip from Mount Kuripapango filled the valley with debris, damming two minor streams in the process. They are landlocked now but for a small inlet stream which flows into the larger western lake. It’s only about a metre wide and we hop across it via a couple of stepping stones on route. This tiny waterway acts as a spawning stream and is sufficient to keep the trout population self-generating. Nature really doesn’t need much of a leg-up at times.

My pace quickens as we drop down a slope at the trail-end before emerging from the trees to the sight of a shimmering lake before us. With mountains rising up on all sides, the scene casts me back to the Scottish hill lochs of my youth and those family holidays way back when. I scan the water and watch as the dainty frame of a damselfly skims out low across the lake. I track its graceful progress over the glistening surface until it is savagely intercepted by a spotted exocet from below. No more damselfly.

Nearly there. Kaweka Western Lake is visible through the trees.

Nearly there. Kaweka Western Lake is visible through the trees.

While I was busy getting all wistful and poetic, a little brownie was thinking ‘lunch’. Having tracked his prey at pace from beneath and calculated an ambush point, he’d taken acrobatically to the air and engulfed the damselfly before landing again with a satisfying splosh.

And he’s not alone. Around the lake other fish are going aerial in a similarly entertaining fashion chasing damsels, dragonflies, and seemingly anything else which flies low enough for long enough. It’s all pretty neat. I’m dying to skate an adult damsel imitation across the top in anticipation of some spectacular strikes but, frustratingly, know I don’t have one in my fly box. So instead I settle on a small foam-bodied grasshopper as an indicator dry and a purple-hotspot pheasant tail nymph suspended 3ft beneath.

Fish are moving and feeding and one rises out to my right, within range. I cast. One, two, three, bang. My grasshopper disappears in a swirling, slashing spray of water and I’m into my first fish of the day. An enthusiastically scrappy fight, with diving runs for the shelter of the weed beds, ends with a beautifully marked brownie, barely 12 inches long, lying in the net beneath me. A combination of a large trout population, cold water temperatures, and an absence of high-protein food sources such as bullies and koura help to keep the average fish size relatively low here. Perfect.

Gazing down, I find it remarkable to think of the historical journey which led to this moment. Brown trout are not native and the ancestors of this stunning little fish, with black and red dots splashed along its golden flanks, were first brought here over 150 years ago. They were soon being enthusiastically introduced into waterways the length and breadth of the country by regional acclimatisation societies, with the Hawke’s Bay Acclimatisation Society (HBAS) responsible for the Twin Lakes. Sadly, the HBAS records were largely lost in the devastating 1931 Napier earthquake, but a probable scenario for the presence of trout here can still be formed from other documents.

The Twin Lakes brownies are reputedly Loch Leven strain.

The Twin Lakes brownies are reputedly Loch Leven strain.

In the late 19th century, a holiday resort flourished at Kuripapango, as a mountain destination for people to get away from it all, with the driving force behind it being entrepreneurial hotelier Alexander MacDonald. MacDonald was the type of man who popped up wherever there was a governance board and a job to do. He was soon involved with the HBAS and, by 1887, was working for them as a ranger covering the Kuripapango area. The potential popularity of trout fishing with would-be guests was not lost on him and newspaper adverts to this end were appearing from the early 1890s. A Daily Telegraph article of 26 March, 1900, further extolled Kuripapango’s appeal, highlighting the existence of a track from MacDonald’s hotel to the Twin Lakes and the fact that they were “well-stocked”.

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With MacDonald’s business incentive to expand the local fishery, and the HBAS’s inclination to do so, it’s not a huge leap to believe he played a major role in the liberation of trout in these lakes. Releases in the late 19th century mostly involved juvenile fish being transported to the water in 35-litre milk tins. The easiest access to the lakes was the track from MacDonald’s hotel, and it’s likely the first brownies arrived this way, being released into their cool, clear waters sometime around the late 1880s-early 1890s.

It’s the descendants of these early arrivals that I’m pursuing now and, as the afternoon wears on, my tactics develop to stalking the shoreline, waiting to see rising fish, and then homing in on them when I do. Once in position, I crouch low (or as low as my knees will allow), wait for another rise and then try to anticipate the direction of travel. The fish aren’t incredibly discerning in all honesty, so a reasonably accurate cast is normally enough to see either the hopper dip under or be devoured itself. More and more fish come to the net in this fashion, with nothing over a pound, and all echoing their highland brethren. With Alfie entertaining himself with sticks and stones and Zipporah still wrestling with a lack of cell phone coverage, dad is blissfully at sea in his own world.

Simple but effective, the two-fly combination.

Simple but effective, the two-fly combination.

There is more to the Twin Lakes stocking story though, as seemingly not everyone is quite as enamoured with small brown trout as I am. In the 1950s an attempt was made to develop the fishery by stocking it with rainbows. The lakes’ remoteness led the HBAS to consider unconventional means to do this and, in late April 1954, a Tiger Moth bi-plane loaded with fingerlings took off from the Hawke’s Bay Game Farm, at Taradale, on a 40-mile trip up into the mountains.

An aeration pump, driven by a small propeller on the front of the aircraft, kept the young trout ‘happy’, while baffle tanks prevented excessive water sloshing and spillage. To oversee the success (or otherwise) of the operation, two dinghies with two men in each were stationed on the water below. The drop was made from 100ft and the pilot asked to ensure at least some of the fish landed in the dinghies, for assessment purposes.

This bit was a head-scratcher for me. The idea of thousands of small fish being purposefully flung at a considerable rate of knots at four guys in boats sounded like something from a Japanese game show. I suspect the pilot had fun if nothing else. Regardless, a newspaper of the day reported that they survived the drop, presumably meaning the fish as well as the dinghy occupants, and in all 15,000 rainbow fingerlings were released. While the juvenile fish may have survived their aerial liberation, they unfortunately didn’t last much longer. The reasons why are unclear, but you have to wonder if it had something to do with a hungry established population of adult brown trout.

I love catching rainbows but, as I slip my net under the last brownie of the afternoon, I’m not disappointed their release here was unsuccessful. It’s been a wonderful day for many reasons but, as Alfie’s stone-throwing gets increasingly enthusiastic, it feels like a good time time to hit the road.

Anthropomorphizing fish is silly, yet we do it anyway; trout are educated, cunning and wily, especially when we can’t catch them. In reality, of course, they’re creatures driven by food, safety, and sex, but as much as fish can have character, these stockily pretty Twin Lakes browns have it. A solid take is invariably followed by a wholehearted scrap and then, after being quickly unhooked, a feisty flick of the tail sees them speed indignantly back off into the depths.

I’ve always found fishing’s appeal hard to explain to non-fishers so, to be honest, I rarely bother. If you look at the bare facts of the effort and expense of driving halfway across the country, traipsing your family into a couple of little lakes to catch a few small fish, only to release them, turn around, and walk back out again, it takes some unpicking. Why do we fish and why does it matter? It’s often enough to know that it just does.


August 2022 - James Fuller
New Zealand Fishing News Magazine.
Copyright: NZ Fishing Media Ltd.
Re-publishing elsewhere is prohibited

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