Mike,
As it turned out, I did fish the Tongariro, right behind our B&B in Turangi. It was LOADED with fat rainbows. Must have hooked at least 5 in a couple hours very late that night (cool that you can fish it til midnight!) and landed two respectable fish. I didn’t get pictures since I was fumbling around in the dark in a river I had just fished for an hour…just tried to keep myself and my accoutrements dry! Fish went around 3 and 5 lbs apiece and I felt a little undergunned even with my 7wt. Both came on infected PT nymphs (chartreuse thorax). In fact, the next morning we did the Tongariro Alpine Crossing, and on the way to the bus I stopped on the main bridge there and counted well over 30 fish all in the seam of that main pool. What a beautiful river! Well deserving of its legendary status 
Wish we’d had a free moment in Auckland to contact you. Since our first day of vacation was totally lost (we left here the 9th instead of the 8th), we had to change a few things to accommodate our most critical arragements. In fact, we had to rearrange our plans for our last day, so instead of arriving in Auckland at 8:20 AM from Christchurch, we ended up arriving closer to 11 AM and having just enough time to get down to the Maritime Museum (very, very cool), late lunch, and back to the airport a couple hours before check-in.
Our very first day there I fished the small stream you and Chris (Gringo) will be fishing shortly outside Rotorua. It was incredible. I had less than 2 hours to fish there after procuring a license (wife was busy walking around Rotorua proper). Hooked 3, landed two. All rainbows. One close to 7 or 8 lbs, the other around 3. I do have pictures of those and will post them in the full report.
We headed to the SI after only 2 days in your neighbo(u)rhood (Auckland-Turangi day 1, then Turangi to Wanganui day 2 and finally to Blenheim via Interislander day 3). SI was very impressive. Saw but couldn’t catch some large browns our 2nd day in Blenheim (I won’t say where here, but it was a small stream close to Tuamarina), but managed a few smallish (35-40 cm) browns in the Wairau. Incidentally, I read that just recently Didymo was discovered there…which may be bad news since the Blenheim area is the last major stop for NI-bound anglers.
Didn’t get to do much fishing after that. Did Kaikoura, then Hanmer Springs and Fox Glacier, and finally did get to wet a line not far from Te Anau, but a front came through and the wind was unbearable. Tried fishing a stream mouth for a few minutes but the chop was too much. Spent some time walking the Eglinton looking for risers the next day but only encountered more anglers. Tried the Waiau between lakes Te Anau and Manapouri but was waderless and had very little time once again.
My last stop was the upper Mataura and it was gorgeous. Hooked 2 browns on blow flies, one broke off but the other I “landed”, which is to say I was perched atop a steep bank, got the fish out of a few brush piles and to water’s edge but wasn’t willing to risk it sliding down the bank into meter-deep water (or deeper) to release him. Handsome buck brown of near 60 cm. I was fortunate enough to slip the fly out of his jaw using the rod tip, though uponrelease the fish slapped my rod and thus placed the fly into a tangle on the bank. Lost dry and dropper…but well worth it. Wife took some photos of me releasing fish from opposite bank but you can’t see the fish and you can barely see me…so again, only a few photos but did get several fish in beautiful condition.
I’ll be back for a fish-only trip perhaps around June next year, so we’ll certainly have to flick a fly together then. Again I wish we were not so pressed for time due to circumstances outside our control. With any luck in the near future we might actually make your beautiful country our home…very seriously.
Take care, and many thanks again.
Marty
