Twenty something years ago I first moved to the Bay of Plenty from Canada. I fished everywhere, man. Lake Aniwhenua was my go to for many years. I spent so much time stalking the edges and fishing all of the water between the dam and the falls. There was a big flood then I returned when things came back to normal. I went down below the dam where there is a water meter reader thingy and spotted what appeared to be hundreds of trout stacked up in a long, deep pool. I tried everything to tempt them and nothing seemed to work. In frustration I put on a glo bug and chucked it out there. It was gobbled right away. That changed things forever.
Over the next weeks I just kept going back and catching more and I recall it was during the winter months. It really was like shooting fish in a barrel. Over time the trout got thinner and thinner. After a while I figured out that they must have been washed over the spillway during the flood. Likely spawned in the Horomanga, they sat and waited patiently for the water to rise so they could make it back upstream to their spawning grounds. That was never going to happen. There was never going to be enough food to sustain those poor buggers. So they slowly wasted away. I think it is called atresia when they reabsorb their gonads for sustenance. Instinct would not let them make a big run downstream to find a new home.
I have been thinking about the Barrel ever since. I cannot remember having those conditions since. For like the whole last year our entire system has been in flood. Every time I have driven by the dam in the last season the spillway was always running.
On Monday I had carcasses to feed pigs in Waiohau so I told told Jack to grab his spinning rod. We drove up to the dam and noticed the spillway was not running and the Barrel looked perfect. We scrambled down there through the scrub and fallen trees to the water meter. Now it is amongst a bunch of boulders. The Barrel had moved a good 20 m downstream. Jack chucked a soft bait in and it's tail was chewed off on the first cast. Then he landed three rainbows in a row and lost a few others. Yes, they were already getting skinny so they had been there a while.
The next day after school we drove up armed with a fly rod and glo bugs. We had about an hour to fish before dark. I put a glo bug below a muppet with a wool indicator above. Jack had never caught a trout on a glo bug. First cast he got one on a Champagne Glo Bug with a Fluorescent Yellow Dot. Pretty much right after that he got one on the Orange Muppet with a Red Dot. He missed several more takes then it pretty much went quiet.
It was really cool to be back after so long and seeing the same pattern. There are plenty of fish there and just below the dam so go and catch a few while the conditions are right. Next time there is a flood and the spillway stops running, be the first in there.
