Anglers greet new season

BIG FISH: Rotorua angler Roger Bowden on opening day. PHOTO/FILE

Lake Rotoiti fished "way ahead" of normal on opening day, going by Fish & Game's surveys of hundreds of anglers who turned out for the start of the new fishing season.

The new season for lakes Tarawera, Okataina and Rotoiti, which close for three months over winter, began on October 1 in warm sunny conditions.

Eastern Fish & Game has released some early findings from interviews with around 800 anglers who were spoken to, mainly as they returned to boat ramps.

Staff and volunteers, including University of Waikato postgraduate students and Department of Conservation officers, measured and weighed more than 760 fish - some tipping the scales at more than 5kg.

Eastern Fish & Game officer Matt Osborne said Lake Rotoiti "performed really well, way ahead of usual, with harvest rates up by as much as 20 per cent". Okataina also fished well on opening day.

"Rotoiti 2-year-olds (the size most commonly caught at opening) were slightly heavier," Mr Osborne said.

The average size was 49cm and 1.52kg.

"The best fish came off Rotoiti weighing in at 5.5kg but there were some unconfirmed rumours of a similar fish caught on Okataina."

Both lakes had seen good growing conditions for the fish, he said.

On Lake Tarawera the fishing had been hard with fish size down slightly compared with the 2014 opening.

"We expected the fish to be smaller as a consequence of tweaking our staggered release strategies, which meant some of the fish had been in the lake for up to three months longer than others," Mr Osborne said.

The growing conditions in Tarawera had also been poor over the past year.

"Next year, with further tweaking of this strategy, we are hoping to see better fish from all the lakes. "

Mr Osborne said the Rotorua lakes provided "lots of options" for anglers, and if the El Nino weather pattern kicked in as predicted and produced some still warm summer days, the shoreline fishing in particular would be "going off".

Anglers are reminded that Lake Rotorua has the highest catch rate of the region's lakes.