Hi Magpie, Shane, and everyone else,
Haven't been on the forum for a long while but thought I'd pop in for a look and saw your post Magpie.
We are having the opposite experience to you with boat fishing at the Northern end of the lake, with good lake boat fishing since Christmas, and for the first time in a couple of years the fish are back to decent sizes, which is great to see.
Stella Gordon of the Store at Te Rangiita says in her latest report online that the lake fishing just seems to be better at the north end of the lake at the moment and perhaps she is right. Nothing to do with farm runoff etc I am fairly sure, as in our area, (Whangamata and Kawakawa bays is where we have mostly been fishing since Xmas) there are plenty of smelt to be seen for the first time in a couple of years, and the fish are full of really big smelt too, and on the several boat accessed picnics at little beaches we have had there have been plenty of green beetles about in the last couple of weeks as well.
Also on fish size, for the first time in about two years we are again catching decent fish, with only a very few under the 40cm limit (in fact not too many much under the old 45 cm limit really, for the first in ages) . Most fish we are landing are I think a half pound either side of the 3lb mark, with quite a few between 3 and a half and 4 lbs, but nothing much over 4 as yet this summer. I would say the fish size is finally recovering well ,with the 40 cm limit finally helping, as is a recovery in the smelt numbers, but we aren't quite there yet on the size front as in the past it would have been unheard of for us to get through most of a January of fishing almost every day with not one 5 or 6 lber among them. However it is well on the improve and we are getting the odd 4lber again.
The fish we are getting are almost all hard fighting fat and silver fish, and those we have kept to eat have had good pink to deep red flesh colour. We have had plenty of friends and family staying so have done all boat fishing out on the lake since Xmas, with no fly fishing at all, and all methods we have tried have worked for us pretty much every time. We have been successfully harling in 15-20 ft from 6am-8am with fast sinking flylines, lots of backing out, and a 20 m flourocarbon trace, with a really big parsons glory / small grey ghost combo, not big numbers of fish landed each harling session but enough, with mostly 2-6 strikes per session, then moving to either downrigging between 85 and 110 ft with frog flatfish and/or orange and black cobras, or jigging drop offs from 95-130 ft with pat swift small ginger mick and grey ghost set ups, and all have been working for us regularly. The jigging has also been working in the early evening for us. Not massive numbers of fish each trip but each two to three hour morning or evening session has seen us land 1-4 fish every time, and usually lose a couple more as well.
We got skunked a couple of days ago with the early morning harling which was odd because the spot in Kawakawa bay had been working for us and it was warm, overcast and with a breeze on the water, which is normally hot harling conditions, but thats fishing for you. I've been boat and fly fishing Lake Taupo and its rivers every year for around 40 years, since I started as a kid, and don't get skunked often from the boat (fly fishing is a different story
), but it still happens sometimes. Anyway after we stopped harling we got a nice fat silver one on the downrigger at 95 ft about 8.30 am on an orange and black cobra, which also fooled me because they mostly only seem to work for us on bright sunny days. We went in for brekkie then.
Sorry to hear your boat fishing wasn't great, but it certainly isnt that way at the North end of the lake for us right now. In fact because the fish are finally of a decent size again it is the best boat fishing we have seen since the fish size started to decline (was that two or three years ago now?). Until three or four years ago, for almost 35 years we fished mostly down the Southern end, out of Te Rangiita, so I know that Southern area too, and it was mostly very productive for boat fishing, although it could have its hard days and even whole weeks too. Perhaps you just struck one of those weeks.
I will pass on your good reports of the camp ground to people I know who like camping.
Cheers and better luck with the boat fishing next time.
