Guided Roger King today and conditions were pretty much perfect. Had a reasonably successful day with Roger landing 10 out of 13 hooked. There didn’t seem to be as many trout around as this time last year but the fishing was still OK with most people we came across having caught a few. Spent some time later after fishing showing Roger the “Tongariro Roll Cast” which I think he has picked the basics up of fairly quickly. Roger has been having some Spey Casting lessons with Chappie Chapman and I think this definitley helped a lot. I even picked up a minor adjustment to make on my Snap T from Roger.

Most reports on the Tongariro are for hard fishing. Several experienced anglers that I have spoken to have been catching far less and far smaller than they have in past years. I suspect the reason for the low numbers is that the season is probably even later again this year due to the long dry summer. I have noticed the fish in the past few weeks do seem to be smaller again than what they were a month ago for some reason.

Tongariro Report

Barometer: No Change

Cloud/Wind: No significant wind

Flow:

Water Temperature:

River Conditions: Low and clear

Recommended Flies: Sawyers Pheasant Tail and Hare & Copper.

Picked up Ken and Carlee Paterson this morning from Turangi’s 5 star River Birches Lodge for their first ever attempt at fly fishing. Being a Saturday morning we did a couple of hours before breakfast where Ken managed to hook and land his first trout on fly. After a quick breakfast and coffee back at River Birches we headed to a new spot where Ken hooked and landed another 4 and Carlee hooked but unfortunately lost another 2 completely unaided making the 7 hooked and 5 landed between the two for the morning.

Tongariro Report

Barometer: No Change

Cloud/Wind: Windy and cold with snow down to low level on Pihanga

Flow: 43 Cumes

Water Temperature:

River Conditions: Clear green

Recommended Flies: Sawyers Pheasant Tail and size 16 Salmon egg and flame glowbugs.

Picked up Gerry Foster and Chris Poynter this morning from Turangi’s 5 star River Birches Lodge for their first attempt ever at fly fishing. Conditions were OK and Gerry soon hooked and landed her first trout shortly followed by Chris. In the end between them they landed 5 out of 5 which was pretty good going. Talking to some friends at TALTAC afterwards it seemed a few people were struggling yesterday though I do know of one or two who did quite well.

Tongariro Report

Barometer: No Change

Cloud/Wind: No significant wind

Flow: 39 - 34 cumecs

Water Temperature:

River Conditions: Green

Recommended Flies: Sawyers Pheasant Tail and small glow bugs.

Went for a walk up the TT this morning to see how things have been affected in the lower areas since the last flood. Never touched a fish myself but mainly walked rather than fished. Eventually came across another fisherman from Wellington who had caught a few - a landed a couple while I was watching and had already had a half dozen on his way up. Mixed results from others I saw. Am guessing the fishing was probably good first thing in the morning but with dozens of people walking by and hitting all the likely spots it was probably getting pretty thrashed by 10 or 11am.

Fished a couple of hours on the Tongariro yesterday and landed 2 from 8 hooked. Certainly no shortage of fish in either river. A few people are still complaining about the size of the trout not measuring up to previous years but to me there does seem to be some better ones around than last year.

Tongariro Report

Barometer: No Change

Cloud/Wind: Strong winds from South

Flow: 33 cumecs

Water Temperature:

River Conditions: Clearing

Recommended Flies: Sawyers Pheasant Tail and Hare & Copper.

Guided Allan Cliffe and Schalk today on the Tongariro. Both were experienced fly fishermen and Allan was an experienced Tongariro fishermen which made life easy for me - and learnt another good wet lining trick from Allan also. The guys managed to land some good fish amongst the 8 landed from 15 hooked - 5 of which were on the wet line. Allan also landed another which was foul hooked hence I didn’t count it and there were a couple of others hooked as I demonstrated as well which weren’t counted in the tally. So all in all the fishing was quite reasonable considering we probably didn’t start until somewhere between 9 and 10, and the Tongariro was still above 40 cumecs all day.

Tongariro Report

Barometer: Rishing

Cloud/Wind: A bit of wind making casting a little difficult at times

Flow: 43 cumecs

Water Temperature:

River Conditions: Green

Recommended Flies: Sawyers Pheasant Tail and Hare & Copper.

Picked up Peter and Anne from Riverway General Store And Outfitters this afternoon for a few hours fly fishing the Tongairo. Peter claimed to have very little experience at fly fishing but soon prooved he was very modest about his “fishing” experience, never once getting in a tangle. There were a huge number of other fishermen out but fortunatley there were a few trout around and Peter managed to land 2 out of 5 hooked for the afternoon.

Tongariro Report

Barometer: Just starting to fall a little

Cloud/Wind: No significant wind

Flow: 41 cumecs

Water Temperature:

River Conditions: Green and clearing

Recommended Flies: Glow bugs and Hare & Coppers.

After flooding a couple of days ago and showers of rain since David still managed a good days fly fishing on the Tongariro which stayed well above 60 cumecs for the day. David managed to land 8 out of 10 hook and plays and missed a definite 11th take where we actually saw the fish splash on the surface. There were a few other fish being caught around the place so the fishing overall wasn’t too bad given the river was flowing at over twice normal flow. David had a ball, and we covered quite a lot of water in the afternoon searching for pods of trout and eventually finding one area where we added several to the days already satisfactory talley to hit double figures on hookups - pretty good given the conditions. David wouldn’t allow my flies to be seen in any photos and refused my offer to take some back to try on the “Test”! They were just large salmon egg glow-bugs - not for English Chalk streams though!

Tongariro Report

Barometer: Low

Cloud/Wind: No significant wind

Flow: 65 cumecs

Water Temperature:

River Conditions: Cloudy Green

Recommended Flies: Size 10 Salmon egg and flame glow-bugs.

Went for a short walk from my house an hour ago and am back again now so I guess it didn’t take too long to land a couple of 3 pound Rainbows in over 80 cumecs. Saw one other fisherman hook and land 1. The trout were recoveries and by no means fresh runs out of the lake. If we don’t get too much rain the Tongariro will be sort of fishable tomorrow at around 50 - 60 cumecs I would guess. Have been having reasonable good fishing in a few spots around the 50 cumec flow rate so fingers crossed for no rain.

Tongariro Report

Barometer: Low

Cloud/Wind: No significant wind

Flow: 83 cumecs

Water Temperature:

River Conditions: Milky green-brown

Recommended Flies: Size 10 salmon egg and flame glow-bugs.

Guided a group of Australians on the Tongariro today and though the water was above 60 cumecs did fairly well hooking 9 or 10 fish. It was more of an exploratory mission for the group learning the river for there up coming week.

Tongariro Report

Barometer: No Change

Cloud/Wind: Windy from north

Water Temperature:

River Conditions: High and green

Recommended Flies: Salmon egg and flame glowbugs size 10 and 8.

Guided Tetsuya Tanaka from Japan on his final day of his 3 day fly fishing excursion to New Zealand. Again the weather was not fantastic but in the end we finally managed to crack a pretty good days fishing for Tet. First in the morning we went up the TT at just under .7 meters. The fishing was slow and appeared to be that way for the other fishermen up there too. Tet did manage a fantastic fresh silver rainbow in perfect condition around the 3 lb mark. In the afternoon we headed back to the Tongariro flowing at just over 50 cumecs - still high and managed to hook and loose 3 nymphing before landing a further 3 and losing 1 wet lining making 7 hookups for the afternoon which is quite good fishing in any conditions. The fish Tet landed were all good condition fresh silver rainbows and the biggest was around 4lbs. The fish appear to be a little bigger than last year and maybe conditions in the lake might be slowly returning to normal.

Tongariro Report

Barometer: No Change

Cloud/Wind: Windy but fishable

Water Temperature:

River Conditions: 53 cumecs

Recommended Flies: Olive Wooley Buggers.