Harvey Clark from Rotorua – well known angling scribe who used to feature as the NZ Herald fishing editor for many years in his previous life. 

As you can see, Harvey is really enjoying a relaxing holiday to escape the stress and pressures from Rotorua where he promotes trout fishing – one of NZ’s best advocates for trout fishing ever… 

To adjust to the TRM pace on the Tongariro he wisely limited his fishing time to TRM gentleman angler’s hours – no more than 3 hours in the morning.  So his catch rate was limited to office hours after the main Tongariro peak time when the popular pools were rested, between 9 and 12.  He commented as follows:  

“Landed seven this morning but should have landed twice that many.  Hook spat several times and three break-offs at tail of pool after running down there across the boulders!  Great test of my legs but bloody exhausting.    Lost one of about 7 lb broke me off becaused I was careless.”

We wanted to compare the continuous run of such well conditioned Rainbow trout to what was caught a few years ago.  TRM’s youtube video below was taken three years ago but most of the evidence – trout – were from the previous season.   (You might have to ‘google’ it as it would not load?)

Disregard all the big browns in the video – they are misleading – but check out the relatively seedy condition and smaller size of the Rainbows – compared to this 2017 spawning season.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VGrFZSqUS4g&t=57s