Trout size…

More fishy correspondence:

Had a cracking weekend down at the Mackenzie Country canals over the weekend, lots of great eating size salmon and both browns and rainbows over 20lb.

But what really topped the weekend off was seeing the longest trout I’ve ever seen come to the bank, caught by Antoine Monier. While not the heaviest trout ever landed, as far as I’m aware this could be the longest trout ever landed, the next longest I can find any info on is a 96cm brown. I’ll let the pictures speak for themselves, 106cm of pure ridiculousness!

Continuing correspondence:  Letter from Herb spells it out so that even I can understand it:  Wonder why DOC cannot understand it?

Hi Ross

The irony is that this is also a “Wild Fishery” of genetically identical rainbows to Taupo.     The most urgent thing doc must do at Taupo is to keep the numbers of trout in balance with the available food in the lake from one year to the next.    It is not good enough to do hand wringing and brattle on about “Wild Fishery” and then do nothing.     A couple of months ago I was talking to the Eastern F&G scientist and mentioned why DOC should investigate supplementary food sources that don’t compete with smelt and he too wondered  why DOC had not done that already.
http://www.fishing.net.nz/forum/possibly-the-longest-trout-ever-landed_topic118121.html (repeated below)

The irony is that this is also a “Wild Fishery” of genetically identical rainbows to Taupo.    Size is directly related to food and there is not enough food in Lake Taupo for trout to grow to grow to anywhere near their potential.     The most urgent management intervention DOC must do at Taupo is to keep the numbers of trout in balance with the available food in the lake from one year to the next”.     This is particularly important in this food poor lake that frequently suffers from an imbalance between trout and smelt and this is practically the only management intervention available to DOC.

Cheers
Herb
 

Thanks Herb.  For many years TRM have promoted a massive whitebait farm on the delta to fix the problem in the food chain – to supplement the trout primary food source.  Surplus white bait could be sold to cover the costs.  Government have spent $80 Million trying to keep the lake 100% pure to fit their promotional image and put nothing back to replace the starving smelt to support a $30Million p.a. trout fishing industry…

Just imagine the effects on Turangi tourism if they put their efforts into growing trophy trout like that above…  It isn’t that hard – they only need feeding.

 10am Update from facebook:

Shane French na mate sorry I don’t believe it to be a food thing, in our system. A fish like the one in this picture is top predator, nothing accept humans are going to hurt that bad boy. This fish will take anything it wants including baby ducks, mice and anything else it sees. The babies it helps to fertilize will be huge. Ross Baker have you seen the amount of fresh water crays in the lake…… That is some of the best food out there and when our trout get big enough they will chow down on them but that takes years for them to be able to do this and they just don’t have the start they need. Our big fish population has been decimated and now we are just breeding small little things that will come back into the system as FAT HEALTHY SMALL FISH and breed more SMALL FISH. We don’t have a food source problem, move away from that mate, your barking up the wrong tree. I had continuous reports all year of HUGE masses of smelt from two mile bay over to Western Bays. If all the trout were skinny like they were 7 years ago then yes you could say the food is not there but I am catching trout that are almost as fat as they are long 🙁 . Sorry Boss I don’t agree with you at all.
Interesting…  As Herb suggests above – ” Size is directly related to food and there is not enough food in Lake Taupo for trout to grow to grow to anywhere near their potential.”  What do you think?