Hi Guys, I am just back from the Tongariro river, Fishing was fairly hard but I did manage a few small rainbows and one Massive 4kg Brown!
The Brown won me the club AGM weekend fishing comp, so I was very pleased.
This is me with the Brown
Here is the fish on the bank
And some scenerey for you
All the best.
Mike
Hi Mike,
Great to see you got out. Thatās a great looking fish, looks to be in good condition. What did it take?
Lovely shot of the lake. Itās a beautiful part of the country.
- Jeff
Looks as though you had a good time on the Tongo. That is one nice Brown there, and to think that at one time Browns were considered as undesireable Aliens by many fishermen in the area.
Did you get a chance to flick a Cicada on the āBig O?ā I hear things are on the move down there. Jax
C&R? Nice wild animal.
No C&R Rocketfish I am afraid the Department of Conservation who run this fishery are asking all anglers to keep every Brown they catch and supply them with a liver and flesh sample for research. They have a theory that the Browns are eating all the Rainbow fingerlings and the Rainbow numbers and size have fallen in the Taupo area due to this (Sound familiar Jax?). I do not subscribe to this theory but I do believe we need to help with the research to prove it one way or the other.
The fish took a size 16 bead head ptn fished under a big Cicada dry fly, The fish were feeding up on the Cicadas big time, but every fish I hooked took the nymph not the Cicada, go figure!
Here is a Rainbow that was released.
And a big Rainbow in the water, too spooky for me to hook.
All the best.
Mike
Sorry Jax, forgot to say I did not get up the big O, but one of the club members did, he caught 9 good fish on Friday, the biggest about 6lb, but he said even though the Cicada chorus in Turangi is deafening he did not see any up at the lake and all his fish were on a small black nymph.
All the best.
Mike
Very nice brown. Thanks for the photos!
I would not agree with that theory either.
Personally, a brown trumps a rainbow any day.
OK. I donāt agree with that regulation anyway. Mother Natureās (wild) regulations are always the best at the long term. Something similar here in Patagonia the biologists made for the brookies against the rainbows. Just nothing happened and finally the lake made its own regulation. Thanks for the picts Mike.
Since the early 1900s there have been times when the size of the rainbows starts to deminish. Itās always been either not enough food (before they introduced the smelt) or overpopulation of Rainbows. The response in the past was to net tons of fish to reduce the number of trout, so that the remaining ones would reach a larger overall size. The idea that the browns eat enough fingerlings to reduce the Rainbow numbers and yet not result in a corresponding increase in size of the ones that survive seems to ignore the past data.
The smelt took a beating about what, 4 years ago now, when the lake didnāt stratefy during the winter and that messed up their breeding (something like that anyway). Iāve heard the smelt have been slow to recover as well, but Iām not sure if thatās true? If it is, then it seems to me the most likely culprit is an insufficient food supply and they need to work on increasing the smelt population rather than reducing the brown trout population.
- Jeff
ā¦ didnāt get that big eating size 16 ptns!!
It is quite likely that he has eaten many, many small fishies over his lifetime, and more recently a 10-12" rainbow probably qualifies as small for him. And he probably has a bunch of friends doing the same thing.
There was a small stream down in SE Idaho that was chock full of small brookies and bows, the year I caught ( and released ) a 17" brown there. The following year, not so many little fishies. I canāt say for sure that big brown had much, if anything to do with it, but it surely seemed so at the time.
John
P.S. Itās easy to criticize and question your fisheries biologists, and maybe the folks running the show down your way deserve it ?? The Idaho fisheries people that Iāve known generally know a lot more than nonfisheries people and are definitely dedicated to doing the best thing possible for the fisheries. Good to hear that you gave your local fisheries people āthe benefit of the doubtā, Mike.
Awesome fishies Mike. I still wear my TALTAC club pin on my cap. The one you gave me. Looks like you had a good day out. Thanks for sharing. Jim
Hi John,
Iām not normally one to 2nd guess the biologist, but in NZ the Rotorua and Taupo areas are huge fisheries and tourist industries. Thereās a view that Rainbows are worth more, considered easier to catch, put up a more impressive fight (jump more, etc), so browns are often viewed as something to be removed. The decision to remove browns is an attempt to reduce the practice of C&R, because the fish population grows to such a size that the fish end up being smaller. In the early 1900s they netted tons of fish to remove them, and for a couple seasons the remaining fish were massive (Iāll try and remember to look the details up and report on it, but itās scattered through a couple books Iāve not read in a while). The past few years the fish have been smaller than usual, so the idea now seems to be to reduce the competition by removing the unwanted browns.
Much of the goal by the fisheries here is to maintain a viable commercial industry, and brown trout are considered bad for business.
In the end, though, this ist a fishery that wonāt be hurt by people keeping a few more fish.
- Jeff
Thanks for all the comments guys, it is an interesting debate for sure. As a matter of interest the Brown had no small fish in its gut contents, but it did have a mouse and a few caddis nymphs.
Jeff I think you are on the money with the smelt comments and I believe that DoC want to spend some money on research into the smelt and how to improve the smelt population. I think the Brown trout have only become a problem on top of the lack of smelt, but at this stage they can do nothing about the smelt so they are concentrating on doing something about the Browns.
Jim the trout was caught in the TALTAC agm weekend tournament. Glad to hear you are wearing that badge while fishing!
All the best.
Mike
Dessert ??
I wouldnāt pretend to have any real insight into a far away local situation, whether here in the States or in another country. Just pointing out that people who make their careers and livelihood in things like fisheries biology are generally good people, with good information and ideas, trying to do the right thing, at least the ones Iāve met in the U.S. National Park Service, the U.S. Forest Service, the U.S. BLM, and various state agencies involved with fish, wildlife, and parks.
I do find it interesting that browns are considered bad for business down your way. I canāt recall N.Z. being touted for rainbow fishing - most everything that I have noticed or that has stuck with me has been about the big browns down there.
John
Hi John,
I fully agree. Most of the people who would be doing the front line work, and the research, and such are good people motivated by trying to figure out whatās going on. However, the final decision about what to act upon is made by people whoās primary concerns are the bottom line, and that can skew the interpretation of the data before them. They are trying to manage a tourist industry, not a wild trout population (all the trout are introduced here; the rainbows came from the Russian River in California. Apparently some years ago there were trout ova returned from NZ to the Russian river to help restore the fishery there. The browns came from Scotland, I think?)
The south island is well known for itās brown trout fisheries. Taupo and Rotorua (the two major spots in the north island) are primarily rainbow fisheries, but there are lots of browns as well. The browns make for the photo opps in the advertising, but big rainbows are what most people catch when they get here!
Anyway, the thing is thereās a history of people deciding the brown trout are the scurge and then trying to eliminate them in the thinking that this will restore the rainbows. It goes back to the early 1900s, and probably beyond. In the past, it has generally turned out that the problem was over popuation of trout which then ate up the food supply, resulting in the size of the trout reducing over the years. Although the report says there are āfewer troutā, that usually means āfewer trophy sized troutā, but thatās an assumption on my part. Given the hit the smelt population took in Taupo a few years ago, and how thatās been slow to recover by my understanding, it just seems to me that the historical reasons apply in this case.
Of course, that would mean that all fish should be caught, as the solution is usually to reduce to the overall trout population (both rainbows and browns), while letting the baitfish population recover! They did this before by netting out tones of fish then introducing smelt (the trout had eaten all the native fish that lived in the lake, which had few predators before). However, indescriminantly netting tonnes of trout which they are not allowed to sell (and so will just go into a dump somewhere) isnāt going to go down well in todays world.
I didnāt mean to disparage those doing the research. I just wonder if those doing the actual research are the ones making these suggestions that get implemented?
- Jeff