Fishing spots: Watch the waters boil with trout

Going to Taupo for the holidays? Want to go trout fishing but don't know much about it? HARVEY CLARK describes where to go and what to do.


Some of the best trout fishing in the world can be had in the central North Island, especially round Taupo, which is an outstanding, self-regenerating wild fishery.

When you catch a top-condition Taupo trout you catch the real thing - a genuine wilderness trout, not one raised in a hatchery.

For the experienced angler, the Taupo fishery offers everything one could wish for. For the beginner, a world-class guiding service is available and expert advice can be found at the tackle shops in Taupo, Turangi and at smaller settlements on State Highway 1.

If you are planning a lazy holiday round Taupo and want a casual day's fishing on the lake, a guide with boat will cost $450-$600 for a day or $250 for a half-day. I'd recommend 7am-11am and 5pm-9pm, preferably with skies overcast and light breezes.

Your guide will decide where to go and methods to use depending on the lake condition and weather. Several options are available. My choice would be a trip that combines harling - trolling with a fly in the coastal shallows and along the cliffs and volcanic drop-offs round the western and southern bays - with an hour or so anchored at the Tongariro delta (mouth), a pleasant spot and often highly productive.

If you are keen to learn more on your own, ask your guide to give you 15 minutes' casting and retrieving tuition and show you a basic knot (the improved clinch knot is a good starter for most purposes), then hire a rod, line and waders (about $35 a day or $160 a week), spend $25 on a handful of smelt, streamer and night flies and a spool of 3kg nylon and head for the action.

And, being a beginner, practise, practise, practise.

Go to the Waipehi, Waitetoko and Waimarino stream-mouths or Mission Bay Pt on the lake's eastern/southern shores, or to Tokaanu and the Omori and Whareroa stream-mouths or Kurutau spit on the western side.

With any luck the smelting will be in full cry and the surface boiling with feeding fish. (Yes, it can be as good as that.)

Smelting occurs frequently through spring and summer when the lake warms and millions of whitebait-like smelt - main diet of the trout - come into the shallow, sandy beaches and stream-mouths to breed, and the trout follow them in to feed.

The smelting can be frantic, lasting an hour or continuing sporadically all day.

The beginner should cast out in the area of feeding fish and retrieve the fly with a jerky motion. If you do not see any smelting after half an hour, move on. If you have a boat, then remote hot-spots round Western Bay - the Whanganui, Waihaha and Waihora stream-mouths - are accessible.

It is now 9.30pm and, as a beginner, you have had a long, tiring day out - but your sport is far from over. Often the best lake-edge and stream-mouth fishing is between sunset and midnight, especially dark, moonless nights when luminescent flies come into their own.

At this time of year smelting will go on through the night, but also big browns, which are nocturnal feeders, will come out to prey on freshwater crayfish. These can be caught using the smelting technique or by using large, black night flies (burglar, woolly bugger, scotch poacher, Craig's night-time, fuzzy-wuzzy, maribou, hairy dog) and creeping them along the bottom with an extremely slow retrieve.

You must stop fishing at midnight, but the keen beginner can start again at 5am and sometimes, in that hour before dawn, you will land five or six fish.

For experienced anglers, the smelting should be in full swing now at all the top spots on the lake, and you could pick up a trophy brown late at night at Waipehi, Omori, Whareroa or Waitahanui.

On the Tongariro, small runs of fish, including large, early-spawning browns, will continue entering the river, with dawn and dusk the best times for fishing. Use tiny natural nymphs and fluorocarbon, or small brown or green woolly buggers or a Mrs Simpson.

For dry-fly exponents, the evening fly rise can be spectacular on the Tongariro, especially after humid days. The black gnat, twilight beauty and green beetle are recommended, along with emerger patterns. In bright summer daylight, try a large royal wulf or red-tip governor (size 10-12) - using it as a strike-indicator as well as a dry fly - with a tiny nymph or "wee wet" green beetle tied a metre below it on fluorocarbon.

* TOMORROW: Bay of Islands

Previous: