Reel Life April 2021

April and May signify the start of the winter spawning season for trout in the Eastern Fish & Game region.

Cooler weather and the onset of rain stimulates fish to commence the migration to spawning grounds, and this provides a great opportunity for anglers.

Big, prime rainbows are already on the move at the stream mouths around the Rotorua lakes.

Reports of good catch rates have been received from Tarawera stream mouths.

Early runs often tend to be smaller, juvenile wild fish with larger hatchery fish following and this has been confirmed by our trapping at the Te Wairoa stream, which is used mostly to collect brood fish for the Ngongotaha hatchery program.

Above Right: Mike Dorman of Rotorua with a Tarawera rainbow from 2020.

Every year we remind anglers that winter success is much enhanced by the onset of rain, especially after a still, dry period.

As we can see from the table below, spawning fish respond to rainfall.

During five days of trapping in late May 2020, 101 fish ran the Te Wairoa stream with 53 of those running on one night (May 25^th), as 32mm of rainfall occurred.

The other four nights, which were mostly dry, saw average runs of just 12 fish per night.  

The water temperature, which fluctuated throughout, seemed to have little effect on the other hand.

Table 1. Te Wairoa fish run Vs rain, mm

So, warm, sunny afternoons might be enjoyable for sitting in a fold-out chair, soaking a Boobie fly, but cold, wet, miserable weather produces more fish!

Key winter locations on the lakes are any of the stream mouths as spawning trout naturally attracted to inflowing water.

Also, the places where Fish & Game release fish as maturing adult fish will tend to ‘return’ to these spots as if they were naturally spawned there.

Locations can be found in the hatchery liberation schedule found here.  

Datawatch tagged trout can now be entered online

Entries go into the draw to win one of 20 free whole season fishing licences.
https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/QCH5ZR6

Eastern Region Fishing Diaries – All lakes and streams

Fill in your fishing diaries here to help us manage the Eastern Fish & Game region.

Participants go in the draw to win a $100 voucher from Kilwell:

https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/QRSD7D3

Tight Lines

Mark Sherburn, Eastern Fish & Game Officer.