Opening day too wet - even for the trout
It wasn’t the start to the season they had hoped for but a group of devout trout fishers still finished the day off with a celebratory tipple.
‘‘Opening day’s always special to us,’’ said Pogal Moratti, who enjoyed a drink with friends at the end of Taranaki’s opening day of trout fishing on Sunday.
‘‘We’re always out there...every opening.’’
The president of the Inglewood Rod, Gun and Recreational Club and a handful of fellow anglers hit the Pa¯tea River before sunrise where they were posted up for much of the day.
But the fruits of their efforts were slim, with the group only managing to catch two trout both weighing about three pounds.
‘‘The rivers were just too flooded, we couldn’t get what we wanted,’’ he said.
‘‘It was hard fishing for everyone I talked to today.’’
However, Moratti remained positive and said once it dried out and the rivers ‘‘came right’’ it would be a good season.
‘‘The water was just too murky, the trout didn’t like it.’’
Club patron Graham Steele was looking forward to the rest of the season and planned to take his 12-year-old grandson, Connor Steele, on a few fishing trips.
Steele reckoned the secret to a successful fish was ‘‘just being out there’’ but also noted their lures of choice were spinners and worms.
‘‘But they didn’t want the worms today,’’ Moratti added.
The weekend’s reasonably poor results proved contrary to the predictions of Taranaki Fish and Game field officer Allen Stancliff who earlier last week tipped local trout streams to be in good condition for opening day.
Stancliff said while it had been a wet 12 months, most rivers have come through unscathed and had kept stream-bed algal growth to a minimum.
‘‘With all the rain we’ve had, river and stream base-flows are higher than usual, but this will provide good conditions for spin fishing with toby, rapala and bladed spinners,’’ he said.