For years, we have preached that the choice of fly selection on the Tongariro River spawning runs is not as important as many tackle shops might try to make you believe.

Taupo trout have matured, cruising around Lake Taupo for a few years, surviving on a healthy diet of smelt (whitebait) and Koura (Crayfish). When they are adjusting to a more mixed dirty river diet, they often attack anything interesting. But this trout must have been starving.

Often, they may not be feeding, but it is the nature of spawning behaviour to take anything presented in a natural drift if only to beat any other trout looking at it. But I have never seen a trout digesting such a desperate appetite selection before.

A local angler fished the Tongariro River yesterday in the pouring rain and was pleased to land this healthy Rainbow Jack keeper. It was not until the cleaning process that he discovered the stomach contents of what it was trying to digest…

He posted: “A nice healthy eater, pink perfect inside that had consumed some other fisho’s fishing line besides the usual horned caddis.”

His photo is from TRM library in 2020, when it was not raining…