Guided Dave Betz and Rick Davis today back-country out of Spot X Lodge and had a pretty good first day. After a fairly latish start we hit the river around 9am and Rick was quickly on the board landing a nice 4 poundish Rainbow Trout. The trout weren’t easy but the boys still managed to hook 13 good trout averaging around 4 pounds though the landing ratio of just 3 from 13 leaves us room for some improvements in days to come. Heli fishing for the next 4 days so no reports until then.

Bryce Curle guided the other two of the four person group and managed a similar hookup rate but a higher landing ratio I am told. Bryce was guiding Larry Gordon and Bart Davies on his first fly fishing mission to New Zealand.

 

Fished the Tongariro today with the Phils and it wasn’t long before Phil Norman had landed his first trout of many for the day. We fished one main pool concentrating predominantly on casting tuition for his uncle Phil who did fantastically and was already an expert and mending after 3 days fishing. After lunch we moved up river and hooked and lost 2 further trout out of different lies before hitting a couple of lies back near town resulting in another 5 hookups for Phil Norman and one for his uncle to make 7 landed from 13 hooked for the day.

The condition of the trout did appear to be better than last year and there didn’t seem to be a shortage of numbers either so it seems the fishing is on the mend and I look forward to seeing how the size improves over the next couple of years – hopefully back to a normal 4 lb average.

River levels had receded a little from the previous day so I picked the Phil’s up and headed out to a back-country river which was still a little high and coloured but fishable. It wasn’t long before Phil Norman managed to hook and lose his first trout. Then another 3, and then Phil Norman managed to lose one before placing a perfect cast to hard feeding Brown Trout that refused a dry several times before taking the nymph offered to him after just a couple of casts. Phil Normans uncle Phil then managed a nice brown, and Phil Norman another Nice 5 lb brown and a smaller 2 lb rainbow to make 4 landed from 13 hooked for the day.

Picked up Phillip Norman and his Uncle Phillip (by marriage) this morning to fish flooded conditions. Phillips Uncle hereby referred to as Phil managed his first New Zealand trout on the second cast – it was an awkward spot to cast and unfortunately I had to assist with the casting in the morning due to the difficult spot we were fishing. It wasn’t long before Phil had landed most of the 6 or 7 trout he hooked for the morning with Phillip Norman not far behind.

In the afternoon we fished a different river which had receded a bit after the previous nights flood and hooked another 5, landing 3 of these to make a total of 16 hookups for the day.

Picked up Peter Neil this morning from Turangi’s only 5 star Lodge – River Birches – for a day of fishing. Conditions were a little off with a lot of rain over-night – something Peter is completely familiar with after numerous trips to New Zealand. We did manage to find some back-country water that was fishable and while the fishing wasn’t ‘red hot’, Peter did manage to land several nice trout in the 3 to 5lb range after hooking ten. I would guess that Peter is fast becoming one of Australia’s foremost experts in fishing flooded New Zealand rivers!

Went out back-country fishing today with fellow Turangi/Taupo guide and friend Bryce Curle. Conditions were a little flooded around the areas we went to explore so we fished a bit of water that we guide – normally we don’t fish over guiding water – and had a ball with 14 hookups on good sized 4 to 5lb trout out of 2 pools over 3 hours in the afternoon!

Had a great mornings fishing this morning hooking 14 nice trout averaging three pounds. With all of the fish being in good condition with the exception of two recoveries my landing ratio was good for me at 9 from 14. Spent the evening at Riverstone Backpackers with my fishing mate Rob Henderson tying flies ready for my guiding jobs in October and November and ready for the big back-country opening tomorrow – which looks like it will be flooded!!

Fished the Tongarrio this afternoon with my mate Rob – who runs the best pack-packers in town – for an hour or two late in the afternoon after rain delayed the start. We very quickly hooked three nice Rainbow Trout landing two of about 3 pounds. The size is still not up to normal but the condition of the fish was probably better than last year. Fished around town in the braided water in front of Tongariro Lodge.

Been fishing the Bay Of Islands again for the past week and experienced some of the hottest kingfishing I have ever had. Well to correct that statement my friends and family and anyone I know who wanted to go fishing have experienced some hot fishing with me as I have been using everyone and everyone as guinea-pigs to iron out the kinks and smooth the systems on my new boat ready for chartering from October (actually doing the odd charter now working in with Justin Smith of Oakura Bay Fish Dive & Cruise). On four days out of four this week the boat has hooked over 20 kingfish per day i.e. probably over 100 for the week and this is mainly introducing beginners to the new technique of Mechanical Jigging as well as experimenting with various live bait techniques and rigs. We could have easily been doing 50 – 100 fish days if anyones arms and bodies could handle the beating the 20 – 40 pound kingfish have been giving them. Three experienced marlin fishermen but relative kingfish novices rated the fight has harder and more physical than fighting a marlin due to the type of gear and manner in which these are played i.e. harnesses and gimbles don’t work well with the jigging rods we are using so far and the fish fight deep and dirty.

I have discovered that a badly hooked livebait will pull the big kings up from 80 meters deep without being hit – generally get 3 or 4 or more following a badly hooked livebait to the surface. This should be a great technique for teasing kingies up to take a fly when they arn’t around on the surface. Will experiment with this over the next few weeks.

Have been mucking around all summer with various different knots, and leader systems for the Kingfish and have between us probably lost thousands of dollars worth of jigs but we are finally getting a system that lets us put a lot of weight on the fish with less and less breakoffs.

As a bi-product of this weeks fishing we have been pulling a few nice snapper foul hooked in the head and one nice one in the mouth that have been hitting or 370 and 470 gram knife jigs. On one of the days this week my mate Muz who was exhausted from the kingfish took a break and dropped baited ledger rigs down which wouldn’t reach the bottom before being hooked up on snapper.

My mates are all chomping at the bit to get back out but with a gale warning in force I have taken the boat out of the water for 2 or 3 days to make some modifications to enhance if fishability.

If anyone reading this wants to book a charter then just contact me to book on 021 481 737 or 09 433 2676 or email enquiries@newzealandfishing.com. We are not starting the advertising until September but we are open for business. Not sure how long these kingies will hold in their current position. As the water temperature drops they should move off out deeper. We now have pretty much have a no kill policy on kingfish – or rather a one fish per charter policy over 1 meter in length. Our game is sportfishing and not meat hunting with regards to kingfish unfortunately for those who are wanting to fill the freezer. We would like to preserve the fishery and don’t wan’t to become part of its demise.

We are happy however to allow customers to take their limit of snapper though only one over 10 pounds per customer if you are lucky enough to catch such a creature. We do recommend catch and release as much as possible though.

A little late getting started again this morning, but we still managed to hit the river – this time the Tongariro – shortly after 8am. Reports from all other fishermen were that the Tongariro was still fishing a bit slow with a lot of people spending the whole day out without even a touch – even spoke to a few people who had been fishing a whole week without anything. Needless to say we wern’t expecting a lot, however the fishing wasn’t actually as hard as everyone was saying. We fished handy to where we parked and basically just fished one little lye that we could see some some trout in and Phil managed to get bust off by a good trout pretty early. By around midday Phil had managed to land 1 of 5 hooked which wasn’t a bad effort. I would guess that Phil would have hooked a similar amount the afternoon if he had continued fishing but our plan was to head to a trophy lake near Rotorua for a try before Phil headed back to Auckland for his flight out tomorrow. The trophy lake unfortunately didn’t produce – it was freezing cold and a little windy so I guess the trout just wern’t feeding agressively or wern’t in our part of the lake. In all the Tongariro certainly wasn’t fishing as fast and furious as it will in the coming months but it was still pretty good by all accounts. There also seems to be a general consensous that fish size and condition is gettting better and hopefully but the end of this season or at least next season at the latest things should be back to normal for Taupo.