First – specially for West Islanders, to balance the poor weather results in the “Inmates Interview” from Mornington Peninsula Club below, yesterday we pinched the following image and description from Sporting Life:

Wow! What a great start to the year fishing wise. Some great fishing has been had even though the weather hasn’t been that flash. We had this angler call into the shop this morning with a rather “LARGE” rainbow trout that he caught up at Lake Otamangakau today. We weighed this one on some salter scales from the shop which nearly bottomed out. I read it at 13lb. Pete measured the fish as 30 inches (76cm) long and 17.5 inches (44 cm) in the girth. It was BIG!!!

Introducing four determined fly fishos from West Island – George, Russell, Russ & Terry from the Mornington Peninsular Club (near Melbourne).

They booked a couple of units at Tongariro River Motel for a week or so in late November 2016 to time it for the beautiful warmer Spring weather.. 

SWMBO was concerned as this was – as described by Russ – a ‘trial trip’ for their fishing club. 

If the Tongariro and TRM passed the test they threatened they would double the numbers in 2017.  

So naturally “Murphy” immediately took over and typically threw everything at them.

Arguably the worst wet windy cold November for many years – generally shocking Spring (?) weather to make them feel really at home. 

Then, as a bonus, added an earthquake or two to surprise them and keep them up all night…

Then the river flooded flowing about 225 cumecs – about 8-9 times the usual flow.  When it floods like that most locals stayed away.  Compare flooded images on right with top photo at usual flow levels…

As a result the Tongariro River fishing could have been described as ‘challenging’ at the very least.  

So how did these West Islanders report it?  SWMBO was dreading it – anticipating a D- score card. 

That would be why SWMBO delayed posting their results for so long? 

See video below…

Just in case you missed it? – here it is again…