Trying to be helpful, I asked this lady angler inmate, ever so nicely, if she would like to see my private groyne?…
She recoiled and reacted in abject horror! Or was it excitement? My groin? – Above the loins?
Not really she responded, not even tempted, until I patiently explained…
Not my groins, but TRM’s groynes.
Then, once she understood, she could not wait to see them…
And test them…
Now she loves them.
I should end this report right there but suspect you might want to know more. Trout anglers are always so curious.
Over the last 15 years the modal nymphomaniac angler passing through TRM has steadily got older for some strange reason.
This aging process has limited their mobility as hips and knees and ankles start complaining about navigating over the increasingly difficult undulating Tongariro boulders.
Walking poles do help enormously, they should be compulsory, but sometimes nature needs a little assistance.
A little hint here – if you keep heading down river the stones get smaller and smaller as they get rolled over and ground down in successive floods over the years. By the time you get past the braids the boulders have been converted into gravel.
As the Tongariro River keeps changing the increasingly elderly TRM inmates are always on the lookout for new easily accessible spots to cast from.
More recently this investigation has reached new levels of exploration in the strangest places as the Waikato Regional Council send their diggers and dozers up and down the town pools to destroy the banks and demolish lots of little private stands where inmates had previously enjoyed success.
Some of these were very subtle – just a few boulders to mark the spot where out further the anglers knew their was a hole out of the faster current favoured by migrating trout as a gentle rest spot or a trout home.
Sadly many of these have been demolished over the last month so these canny anglers have been doing their own secret research to try to discover some new lies in time for when the BIG spawning runs start. That is very soon so the need has increased in May.
As such, some secret groynes have mysteriously grown out from the bank in places where anglers least expect them. They achieve two things.
Firstly they provide trout shelters to rest behind. The number of times the polaroids have spied trout tucked in behind them is proof enough. So they attract the trout to wait for us where we more easily cast directly to them. OK?
Secondly the groynes provide anglers with a little stone jetty to stand on to assist casting to easily reach the seam of the main current. Most are located on the TLB (True Left Bank looking down river) town side where blackberry bushes down to the river edge prevent right handed fishos from practising standard 10 to 2 casting techniques. TRM groynes enable inmates to wade in honey spots where they could never wade to before and practice roll casts.
Some anglers have become quite skilled at ‘backward casting’ by water loading, except this method adds to the danger to their anatomy from wayward nymphs. (If you want to practice as a backward caster remember to always remove the barb!) But TRM’s groynes make it so much easier and more effectively reach the hot spots.
TRM’s little stone jetty poking out into the current opens up angler access to cast into the eye of runs that have been unrecognised for many years or only accessible from the TRB, except by our inmates of course. Some might claim this is a bit sneaky or even cheating (?) but they are just jealous of our inmates’ increased catch rate.
So if this lazy method of geriatric wading up as deep as your ankles (i.e. I can get away with just traditional red band waders covering my lower loins) has appeal then ask for directions next time you are booked into our little slice of heaven… We – TRM – have used some of these groynes for about ten years now so we can vouch for their success.
Warning – there is no point in imagining you might find them without a certified TRM guide – like Pumpkin. They are so well constructed and camouflaged to merge in with the natural flow that you would usually not recognise them walk past.
