I have been meaning to head up into the Kaweka mountains to fish the twin lakes for some time. finally I made the trip up this past week for a day trip. The lakes are located 1 hour 15 up the Taihape road. 

Before getting to the lakes you take a nice 20 minute bush walk before dropping down into the valley. This area has some incredible sights, clear view of mount Kuripapango and other peaks of the kaweka range.

Back in the early 1900s Brown trout sourced from loch leven in Scotland, were dropped in by plane. Since then they have thrived well, using the creek on the northern shoreline to spawn. Trout numbers are high and an average sized fish would weigh 1 pound and measure 30 centimetres. Part of the reason these fish do not grow big is the high population and the very cold lake temperatures. These fish feed heavily on terrestrial insects over the warm summer months. 

When I first got down to the lakeshore, I could already see many small browns leaping about and rising to some kind of insect. Later on I would work this out. I quickly moved away from the entrance which is popular with walkers, and began to sight some fish cruising. These were all small fish but for their length they are absolute tanks. After being unable to get them to rise to an Adams, I swapped around seeing how they would react. I eventually settled on a dry and a small hares ear dropper. The browns would quickly swim up after hearing the flies drop onto the water, look up at the dry and then race towards the nymph and stop just behind it. Something was off about it to them obviously. This happened on around 4 fish.

I moved along the shore heading further round since I wanted to cover the whole shoreline, since it is easily walkable. I made another change to my flies and put on a soft hackle pheasant tail under an indicator. Trout were constantly rising and I was making casts to where I thought the trout would be heading. Eventually I sighted a trout and plopped the fly in ahead of it. This time the fish raced forward and took the fly no questions asked.

Compared to the rainbows I am used to these Brown trout fight differently, opting to try the shake the hook free and attempt to run and hide under the weed beds. I got the fish to shore, it weighed just over a pound. Quite stunning yellow / gold colours with many bright red and black spots. I released the fish and continued walking the shore.

I was spotting many fish along with the extremely obvious rises, but what I saw next baffled me. A trout was sitting in a hole between a large weed bed. It can’t be a trout it’s too big, must be a log. Slowly the fins materialised and the head became clear. I took my time and made my first cast count. The soft hackle landed to right of the fish and surprisingly he didn’t bolt. He slowly turned to find the nymph which had now sunk into the edge of the weed. The fish dug it out of the weed and I struck. Perfect timing. The fish raced away out into the lake on its first run. The fight was very good and the brown did its best to shake the hook free along with trying to wrap me up in the weed. After some tense moments I netted the fish.

This fish weighed 4 ½ pounds and measured 53cm. A possible lake record.

I got the photos and sent him on his way. A trophy for the lake I don’t know how many would be bigger living in the lakes. I continued to move around the lake and came onto a patch of fish jumping clear out of the water chasing damsel and dragonflies. I had nothing to represent them so I changed to a small dry hoping to imitate the other small bugs flying around. I hooked fish one after the other losing 4 and landing 4. This was all on a dry dropper, cast between the weed beds. Some fish were even right up on the shore in the flooded grass taking food off the surface. After I had totalled 7 fish caught and released I slowed down to look for more fish cruising. I randomly stumbled upon a brown of over 3 pounds cruising the shallows, he took a red damsel right at my feet.

I think that was day well spent chasing small brown rocket ships. Many things learnt about different sort of fishery, which is rare in the North island.

Cheers