Weather: 23°C and breezy with 20km winds, settling this evening.
Tongariro River Flow: 28.9 cumecs
Good afternoon from sunny Turangi. The wind here the past week has been persistent, preventing some of us from the lake or river, but for those who have found sheltered spots, have reported fantastic fishing.
The jigging has been consistently picking up in the big lake with some cracking conditioned fish being landed among the recovering rainbows around the 30m mark.
Smelting on the lake edges and stream mouths has been gradually improving too as the lake warms and smelt make their way to shore, small smelt patterns are preferred over bigger models at this time. Gary and I have both been out chasing smelting fish, with success, but not in huge numbers just yet.
Niamh and I hit the backcountry earlier in the week and found some good recovering rainbows and other good fish, fishing mostly a dry dropper, to fish in the top water column. Small dries to begin the day followed by smaller terrestrials as the day warmed up proved productive.
Many of you have been asking about the best boot to buy for the coming season and those big backcountry missions and we can't go past the Patagonia Forra boots. Tough, durable, great tread and ankle support while also being lightweight and you can walk all day with no issues! I cannot rate them enough, both Josh and I walked in them for our big backcountry mission on Tuesday and had a blast, no sore feet in sight!
The smaller lakes have been subjected to wind, rain and colour but despite the challenges, the windows in between have been productive. With the warm weather due this week, the insect action will be increasing rapidly and are soon to fire up! Gary has been on the lakes in all weathers pulling out some great fish as always!
In the brief sunny weather windows this week, we are enjoying listening to those few early cicadas sing! Good things are to come!
Need some Christmas gift ideas? We have plenty of ideal gifts for the fishing family! A fresh batch of fish smokers and sawdust are arriving on Monday, we have jigging, trolling, spinning and harling combo rods and reels for those targeting the big lake this summer, fishing caps, wet wading socks, fly tying kits and materials and so much more.
See you out there team!
Rosie & Gary