Weather: Sunny and reaching 19C with expected warm weather to continue through the week.
Tongariro River Flow: 29.8 cumecs (m³/s)
This spell of sunshine will be warming the waters and increasing insect activity, especially for the evening rises which is what we are all in anticipation for! Mayfly and caddis have been seen hatching throughout the day and into the evenings. For those of you who have been out chasing the evening rises will have seen that the rise is happening just on dark for only 10 to 20 minutes before easing. A few more weeks should see fish rising consistently.
I headed out on Friday afternoon to test the smelting waters as getting itchy feet for the summer smelt bust ups around the shores of Lake Taupo! I managed one fish on one of Pat Swift's smelt flies on my intermediate line, with no surface action at all and again, we are still a fair few weeks away from the smelting season to begin. Definitely worth stocking up on smelt flies and paddle tails for the coming fun! We have plenty in store to kick off the season.
Still plenty of reports of fresh fish in the river system, with mostly recovering fish occupying the shallow edges and riffles, tails and slack heads of the pools. With the river flow returning to a lower flow, smaller natural size 14 and 16 nymphs are the go under stone flies and caddis point flies. For wet lining, small woolly buggers and wee wets are the flies of choice, on lighter sinking lines and tips to swing into the shallower edges.
The lake fishing has been productive, people jigging have reported good numbers of mixed conditioned fish. Lake Kuratau and Otamangakau have also had good reports from anglers targeting fish on the move as insect life increases as the weather warms. With fish not quite up on the surface consistently, floating & sinking tip lines from the Rio Predator range have different lines targeting different depths for streamer lake fishing. With a powerful front taper, you can cast heavy flies with ease in the wind, targeting your chosen water depth.
See you out there
Rosie
