An anon TRM inmate departed back to the other island recently after a week experimenting between the choices in styles of fly fishing on the Tongariro River. Down south he is a salmon angler so the adjustments to trout fishing casting techniques were not easy. Everytime he interrogated other fishos he met down river he came away even more confused. Eventually he realised that there is no single rule and different techniques apply to match the geography of pools in terms of water depth, current flow, snags, wading access, etc.

Initially he had been convinced by others from the dark side that only wet lines are effective at this time of the season but eventually his curiosity won from watching other anglers outfish him so he experimented more to discover that he had more success nymphing.

I knew TRM had discussed this issue before and had to dial back to 2017 to find a report to fit his theories. Most of his fishing was in the town pools – Major Jones and Breakfast Pools.

TRM Report – Graduate to a dry fly for 2018?…

When the fishy images of Wayne were posted we were not surprised at the immediate response – i.e.  From GI “Something wrong here………Wayne fishing a dry and dropper? Wouldn’t have believed it without the pictures…………”

So TRM explains…  For many anglers back in the good ol’ days, the only way to effectively fish the mighty Tongariro was with a heavy sinking line towing big streamer flies to penetrate the depths.  How it ever qualified as “fly” fishing is still a puzzle?.

Then about 25-30 years ago a new technique called nymphing was introduced (about the same time as the flow was greatly reduced by the hydro power company) and most anglers converted to floating lines with weighted nymphs on the Tongariro River.  Their increased success was the main attraction.

Now it is simply a matter of choice with each claiming their method is best of course.  But there are still many anglers who have never cast any other way but by swinging and trawling a wet line.  Wayne preferred his wet line but finally he appears to have succumbed to temptation.

He is well known to many Tongariro anglers as Wayne and Wendy (SWMBO’s landscaping gardening consultant) have been our most regular inmates visiting the Tongariro about every two weeks or so over the last 14 years.

It was obviously a sneaky “set-up” by SWMBO who placed our fishing guide in the unit next to them.  She knew he was guiding last Friday and hooked into over 20 something, landing about 15 or so on a dry fly.  That had to be too tempting for any wet liner…  So the next day they sneaked off to the upper river as the guide remarked:

“A fun little mid-morning session on the Tongariro River with Wayne from Auckland. The dry and dropper rig was doing the trick again.”

Which inspired Grant’s comment…

I think Wayne landed one fish during his usual patrol at early sparrows fart while wet lining in his secret pool down river and then managed six late morning up-river on the dry & dropper rig.  I guess that says it all.

Change?  There are always some who resist change and insist on sticking to what they know best.  Changing the habits of a lifetime is always hard, more particularly when the old method proved so successful.  Despite our best efforts we cannot encourage some older (i.e. older than Wayne) fishos to try something new.  They even resist bikes.  So the underlying message in this report is all about a likely conversion to a completely different method of casting for trout.

Perhaps it may be more of a confidence issue – to stick to traditional tried-and-true favourite wet line rig when all the signs are that in summer the nymphomaniacs using dry flies are cleaning up.  But when the trout can be spotted waiting in the shallows, that has to be dry fly time.

Those inmates who have made the ‘switch’ have admitted how lazy their habits were wet lining as now they have to spot trout first and read the water and take a far more sensitive approach to presentation techniques etc.  And that increases the enjoyment factor.

It is interesting to see how many anglers return to the same pool, almost to the same stone, where they last hooked a trout, despite the fact that they know these trout are on a spawning run and will move on every day, or night.  It might be several months between visits but they still have to go back to where they last tasted success.  Perhaps it is a confidence factor.  So this is one of those occasions – WG took up the challenge to try a different rig and, amazingly, it worked.  In fact it achieved six times better than his wet line rig.

Of course he did have some other assistance.  Look at his lucky hat – he could hardly miss…

The sad ending to this fishy tale is that WG slipped back into his old ways and has been a bottom trawler ever since…