Tongariro River Flow: 26.7m3/sec
Weather: Overcast conditions with light Westerly's
Yesterday I (Alex) ventured out on a trip to familiarize myself with the lower reaches of the Tongariro again. After covering a bit of water indicator nymphing I ran across a few smaller pods of fish that were often difficult to reach and in places where a back cast was not possible. Such fishing situations where the Tongariro roll cast thrived and showed how valuable a fly line with a heavy front section was. These fish were all caught on fairly heavy tungsten beaded nymphs to get down quickly in deep water and in front of the fish as they are often right on the bottom. We have a great range of flies at Sporting Life including some of my favourites the Gummers Carpet Caddis and Gummers Ultra Tactical PTN.
I spotted good numbers of brownies but as is often the case they were sitting with their mouths shut. I didn't spend too long on these fish and focused more on the rainbows, particularly those fish that I could spot as the river is still low and clear. Towards late afternoon when the sun was low in the sky, I put on an Olive beaded woolly bugger and got a couple fish on the swing on my floating line.
With not huge numbers of fish seen I was happy to end my day with a half dozen fish caught and released, however not many super fresh fish like I was hoping. These fresher fish seem to be more around the river mouths and Tongariro delta as Josh, Rosie and Teresa have recently been finding. I'm looking forward to the next big dump of rain to say the least!
