When you want to go fishing and can't,
Console yourself with our gazette.

TROUT FISHING WITH MAURICE RODWAY - Weekly Column: 03-March-00
 Southland, New Zealand

The Waiau

For the whole of this fishing season the Waiau River has been fishing well. Most anglers who know Southland's waters well know that only a few years ago its flow in the lower reaches has been boosted by a residual flow from Lake Manapouri. This has made the river downstream of that lake a far better fishery that it was for the previous twenty years when only a trickle was released. 

Anglers have traditionally concentrated on the Waiau between Lakes Manapouri and Te Anau where the average flow was never affected by the hydropower development. While there have been some departures from normal due to power generation requirements the river still has to carry all the out flow of Lake Te Anau. In the Mid summer it is often too high to fish profitably and the best fishing usually occurred towards the end of the season.

This year however there seems to have been a bit of a change form normal. In most years trout have had a steady diet of caddis flies which has kept them in good condition if they were no more than about 1.5 to 2 kg. But fish rarely grew bigger and if they did they got a bit thin. This is due, no doubt, to the required ratio of fish food size to fish size. The rule is that big trout need big food items to grow big. No matter how abundant a food item is the rule applies.

The trout of the lower Waiau obey the same rules and here with the more erratic flows the trout were if anything a little smaller. Occasionally bigger trout were caught, but these were likely to have come from farther downstream, close to the coast where bigger food items in the form of small fish were abundant.

This year however has been the year of the mouse. Mice have been abundant in the beech forests along the margin of the Waiau so trout have had larger food items to eat and so they have grown larger. There have been more reports of large trout from the Waiau this year than in any other I can recall.

However it appears that the mouse plague is over now as trout are not being caught with their bellies full of them as they were earlier in the summer. These big trout will be looking for more food to maintain their bulk so will tend to feed more during the day, especially looking for large food items such as cicadas and perhaps large nymphs.

Anywhere on the Waiau will provide good fishing over the next couple of months, between the lakes, or downstream towards the sea. Its a river where there are plenty of unexplored corners and because you still have to walk a long way over big boulders to find them it is likely to remain so for a while yet.

Maurice Rodway
Southland, New Zealand                           E-mail: information@southlandfishgame.co.nz

Article © 2000 Maurice Rodway, All Rights Reserved.

25-Feb-00   |   04-Feb-00

07-Jan-00   |   14-Jan-00   |   21-Jan-00   |   27-Jan-00

10-Dec-99   |   03-Dec-99   |   17-Dec-99   |   24-Dec-99

04-Nov-99   |   12-Nov-99   |   19-Nov-99   |   26-Nov-99

01-Oct-99   |   15-Oct-99   |   22-Oct-99   |   29-Oct-99

'98 Columns   |   ´97-´98 Columns

Frontier Fishing Gazette has been published
every week for over one week.

trout@frontierfishing.co.nz

RIVER REPORT   |   MAURICE'S COLUMN   |   FISH OF THE MONTH

Introduction | Main Pool |  Rules | Bliss in Te Anau | Southland Angling Bible

Trout Encounters | River Descriptions | Fishing in Southland | Ring-A-River | Salmon Days

First Publication: 29 September 1996, Updated 01-Mar-03.
©1996-2002 NZ Country Matters Ltd.

Frontier Fishing is a South Island, NZ-based, owned and operated enterprise.