Rotorua in the rain!
Hi guys, drove 3 hours on Friday morning to Lake Tarawera in Rotorua for a fish. We arrived in the pouring rain, set up and walked around to the Te Wairoa stream mouth where 2 guys were fishing, a quick chat revealed they had been there since 5am and had not had a single touch!
After about 20 minutes my mate Shaun managed to hook himself in the back of the hand with a wooly ******, ALL the way in, so one of the other guys and myself did a bit of lake side surgery to remove it.
We stayed for 2 hours with out a touch, then headed out to Lake Rotoiti to check it out as we had never fished there before. We visited the Dump, were one guy was fishing without success and the Pipe at the very end of the Lake were 4 guys were fishing again without success. We will return here as it is a very lovely spot and I am sure when the trout are in it would be a great fishing spot.
We then drove back along the length of the lake, to the outlet of the lake that is the Kaituna River. The bushes were full of small tan colour Caddis flies, so Remembering my promise to try to stay flexible and not just do the expected, I ignored them and set up for streamer fishing! The river is very hard to access and fish, it is deep, very fast flowing and has bushes right up to the edge. I managed to find a ledge that I could Skagit cast from and had a ball, hooking 8 and landing 3 from a short pool that led to a grade 4 rapid, hence the lost fish, they know where to run to! Non of the fish landed were very big, but it was great to manage fish from a difficult spot on a difficult day.
So all in all we had a good time, 15 hour day, drove 550k, used a tank of gas ($90) and it rained hard most of the day, cant wait to do it again!
All the best.
Mike