
Photo below of SWMBO admiring various other local species of trout food…

The “Cicada season” for trout fishos usually starts in December but due to the cooler temperatures over the new year period they have been slow to rise in 2025.

But now summer appears to have definitely arrived, we can confirm it is “cicada season” on the Tongariro River and all other Taupo tributaries. Tourists have reported they can hear cicadas singing now. (I’m too deaf to hear them) They are all males, drumming their finest music to attract females. Each species has a distinctive song. Female cicadas do not sing, but they do respond to the males’ song by clicking their wings. These fascinating insects do not have long to find a mate: adults live for only two or three weeks.

For Tongariro River anglers this is arguably the most exciting fishing fly fishos can experience. The loud splashes from big cicadas landing particularly attract Brown trout. Once they have tasted juicy cicadas during a rise they will not look at anything else. But the trout do not quietly suck them. They smash them. Often they will give away their position with their greedy feeding.
The size of evening hatches is always quite a surprise for tourist anglers from overseas. Their usual selection of teeny weeny bugs looks pathetic compared to a local hatch. To persuade novice anglers of the difference in size, we keep a sample glass of dried beetles and bugs to impress them – see below…

With the recent shortage with insect life everywhere, the cicadas would always be at the top of the trout menu. Unlike other river insect life born in the water – mayflies, stoneflies, caddis, etc. – the cicadas live on land and emerge once a year to become trout food. Locally they are considered as the King of Terrestrials.