Rotorua Fly Fishing Report - 20th April 2012

Some very impressive fish have been caught from Lake Tarawera over the past week by shore based anglers. Rangiuru Bay and Stony Point as well as the landing area have all fished very well for this early in the season. Good numbers of great conditioned fish have also been through the fish trap at the Te Wairoa fish trap, with one that I heard of being in excess of 650mm long. As word gets out there is likely to be a stream of anglers heading out that way, especially to fish after dark when most of the fish are more active. With what little moon there is and it rising quite late in the evening catch rates should improve even more as the week progresses. A few trout have been caught from the jetties in Rangiuru Bay, by fly fishing and spinning and usually early in the morning.

A couple of good conditioned fish were caught at the Pipe during the last lot of rain and should there be another period of rain in the near future. I suspect that a lot more fish will be coming into this area. Should the Pipe be inundated with anglers another spot close by can often provide even better opportunities to catch fish, especially after dark, and that is the jetty beside the boat ramp just before you get to the Pipe. Casting along the edge of the weed bed, from either side of the jetty is the best option, rather than casting straight out into the lake. The use of size four black marabou flies or small doll flies have caught many fish from there over the years. Both the café and transformer streams are flowing quite slowly but should be enough to entice rainbows into their respective mouths after dark. I have seen one possible redd at the dump but there should be fish arriving in this area anytime from now on so it well worth walking along the lake edge during the day to see if there is any more sign of fish spawning there. Harling early in the morning over the weed beds has proven more successful than most other methods or times of the day. A 14.25 pound wild rainbow jack was caught by a local angler last weekend and there are sure to be more out there.

The Ngongotaha stream is holding a lot of fish at the moment and can only improve over the next month or two. One pool we stopped at had at least 15 fish in it though they were hard to see. Small gold bead pheasant tail nymphs seemed to be what they wanted on Sunday afternoon. Other pools, especially those that were deep and dark were also holding good numbers of fish. There were also large browns holding in close to the bank in various places but they required extra careful stalking.

Lake Okaro continues to improve as far as catch rates are concerned. There are a few recovering fish being caught but most are in superb condition. Size six rabbit flies or olive woolly bugger flies fished on a slow or fast sinking line has been successful.

Harling on Lake Okataina has been fairly successful and though there isn’t any shore line access at the Log Pool large numbers of fish have been moving up and down the plume from the Log Pool Stream as well as other streams entering the lake. Finding a spot to cast from at the beach by the lodge is going to be a challenge this year if a lot of anglers turn up to fish. Very little of the beach is above the waterline and what is has very limited back casting.

Lake Okareka has been fishing ok from the shore, particularly at Boye’s Beach. The southerly wind over the past couple of days has made casting difficult but well worth the effort. The stream entering through a patch of bush at the right-hand end of the beach as well as the lake edge in front of the rowing club/waka ama area has also produced a few fish at times.

Okere Falls Arm has a lot of small fish holding there at the moment. It seems to be a trout nursery at this time of the year but that will change once the larger fish move in to spawn. The water temperature is still a little high but one or two fish around the two kilo mark have been landed there. With the first of the winter frosts arriving last night and probably many more to come the lake temperatures will drop reasonably quickly.

Lake Kaitawa over near Lake Waikaremoana fished well for one visiting angler. The pictures that he showed me of 10lb plus rainbows and some very large brown trout were quite spectacular and he has returned to Germany with many great memories of his six months fishing in New Zealand.