There are those who argue that the Taupo fishery contains too many trout, that they have eaten the ecosystem out of house and home , and that as a result the remaining fish are small and skinny. I just don't know enough to comment, but the fish size seems to change year to year. (In 2017, we broke out the 5 & 6 weight Spey rods and still got dealt to by enough fish to keep it interesting). What I do know is that since 2015 until the weekend just passed, I have killed a sum total of 5 trout (all fat silver spawners) and have smoked every one of them. All that was about to change... for quite some time the lads had discussed recreating one of those old time black and white 'kill shots', the type where stern faced, hat wearing mustached types stand behind or holding their fishy kill. Kind of anti catch 'n release, kind of grotesque and way the hell out of step with the modern mentality. When killing fish, we refer to it as 'WABing', where WAB stands for the Welcome Aboard Bat (or priest) - the mini club used to kill the fish with a blow to the head.
So we were on a mission. A kill mission. Hell, I'd packed a fluffy indicator rod. And egg patterns. And split shot. My first fish of the weekend was 'scratched up' as we call it. But I'd quickly grown bored of using an outfit mismatched for the task at hand and after a while traded it in for my #s Trout Spey HD, and began to swing the run below the hole we'd been 'nymphing' (egging with split shot) while Jase went on to beach and kill 5. We were on mission. Later, Jas, Tim, Layla and I headed to the TT, a smaller river. We expected that with a bit of rain and some colour in the water that we'd do alright. We left our jackets in the truck and set off in bright sunlight. As we'd begun to fish, rain bearing clouds closed in and soon a torrential downpour was upon us. I was glad of my merino layers. We swung flies on the light Spey rods and all caught fish. Tim landed a beauty which went in the kill stats. It was a nice change of scenery. The weekend conditions were akin to combat fishing. Anglers occupied every pool. I'd walked a long way to get to my chosen water and fished it as carefully as I could for 3 plucks and one (great) fish landed. I'd planned to walk up to the next pool which had treated me well of later, fish that, then come back down. But once up there I found a guy waist deep and left him to it. At the truck it was decision time.. where to go to find more fish? Upstream the gates were locked and no one was parked so with lab in tow I set off on the brisk 200 min walk to my chosen water. Not an angler in sight. Nothing like a walk to separate men from boys. My waders were leaking (again) but the sun was out, and despite the gusts I was able to pin good casts out. The pluck on the fly turned into a good set and the fish on the end burned line out. A good fight came to an end with fish in net and he became a stat soon after. Downriver, the town pools we frequent were surprisingly free of anglers (its challenging water) and on 2 trips down the pool I took 2 more fish, a sweet fat hen and a dark silver jack. I fished on, only finding one other fish worth adding to the pile. At base I cleaned mine and the other guys' fish and added them to the chiller. Then I set the fire and dried out my waders and wet trousers, dried the dog, showered and grabbed a beer. We'd agreed to be ready at 3.30, dressed to kill in op shop clothing. The boys rolled in and we set off. We arrived at the same time as a DOC ranger - photographer found! At first he was taken slightly aback before joining in the spirit of the occasion. He first wanted some shots for his Dept's website and then took shots of us in full garb, and made a great job of it.
The results are quite outstanding really. A job well done.
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