It's a fairly gloomy day in Turangi today with the drizzle having well and truly set in this afternoon. The maintenance on the Poutu canal continues to keep the Tongariro topped up with it currently sitting at 54.7m3/sec.
Wet lining with woolly bugger and rabbit patterns seems to be producing well during the day, large brown trout seem to be a common occurrence at the moment for anglers using this technique. Dry dropper fishing is certainly still a viable option in these high-water conditions especially if you are targeting the soft edge water where brown trout are likely to be hiding away, this is exactly what Neil went and did during his day off yesterday and nabbed a red spotted beauty of a brown trout which took a liking to one of Carty's Colobriscus nymph patterns which are available instore.
The Stream mouth fishing continues to be very consistent with good numbers of fat chrome rainbows during the day and large brown trout regularly gracing the net of those willing to stay out after dark. If you're looking to change things up from the regular river fishing, we would highly recommend giving this a crack. There is some wonderful fishing to be had both with smelt flies during the day and lumo or large black flies during the night.
The Rio Aqualux is the ideal line for fishing our shallow stream mouths. Being an intermediate (slow sinking) line, it gets your flies in the zone just below the surface. The other advantage to fishing a sub-surface line as opposed to a floating line at these stream mouths is when there is a riffled/rough surface created by the wind, instead of being in the surface film and getting manipulated and kinked by the action of the waves which gives you less contact to your fly the Aqualux cuts in just below the surface and stays straight giving you better contact to detect even the most subtle of grabs. At either the delta or stream mouths with a defined drop of into deep water where booby fishing would be the preferred technique, we recommend the Rio Outbound Short I/S5/S7. This line has an aggressive front taper which is perfect for smashing out cast into the wind, gaining distance on your cast and turning over large marabou boobie or muppet glow bug style flies. Unlike most integrated shooting heads which go straight from a fast-sinking tip to a floating running line this line transfers seamlessly from a 7 inch per second sink tip to a 5 inch per second mid-section and then to an intermediate (slow sinking) running line. this eliminates any hinge effect you may get when fishing a sink tip that immediately transfers to a floating running line and gives you better contact to make the perfect hook set every time. Check them out on the links above.
Tarn.