GOING FISHING with Kotare

Press, Volume CXVI, Issue 34047, 10 January 1976, Page 9

GOING FISHING with Kotare

One of my most cherished ambitions is to overcome the infuriating’ indifference of the Acacia Bay Rainbow Patrol. They don’t mount the patrol until round about mid-summer, so I still have plenty of time to work out some solutions. But I have a nasty feeling that those poker-faced rainbows will contemptuously shoulder aside every fly, lure, or spoon I swing their way. Fishermen not acquainted with the Rainbow Patrol will find the phenomenon of absorbing interest. But if they are heavy smokers, nurse a heart condition, suffer from high blood pressure, or are subject to feelings of vertigo in high places, they are not advised to go fishing at what the maps call Waikereru Point when the early patrol is at its busiest. Not infrequently, the morning will seem at first to be completely enchanting. The sun will be out in a clear sky, throwing light down at an angle that permits the fisherman to see clearly to the bottom all around him. The water is very deep there, and sometimes it is so clear that those who are affected by heights may succumb to sensations of dizziness.

Across the water, on such a fine morning, the borough of Taupo will be basking in the warmth under Mount Tauhara. Launches will be purring south. Ducks will be paddling in Acacia

Bay, and a heron may be stalking cockabullies near the jetty. Any feelings of vertigo experienced by the angler will melt away at the appearance of the first of the outlying scouts of the Rainbow Patrol. Then singly, in pairs, trios, or quarters, big, brown-looking ' patrolling rainbows will come questing past the point. Sometimes, half a dozen fish will be in view at one time. Very often, some will be going one way and some the other, like folks out for a walk. The angler new to the patrol, trembling with excitement, feverishly’ tries to put his tackle together, with fingers that are suddenly all thumbs. He knows instinctively that the line he is gradually threading through the rod-rings is the wrong one, but he can’t change it now because the fish might not wait that long. He knows instinctively that the fly he chooses will be the wrong one too, but time is of the essence. He discovers he has missed a rod-ring in his haste, shrugs his shoulders, finds a patrolling rainbow coming his way, and casts. Oddly, the fish will have nothing to do with the lure.

All the angler’s stamina, fortitude, and courage will certainly be stretched to their respective limits, while the patrol is present. Floating, medium-sinking, fast-sink-ing lines, and all the angler’s boxes of lures in-

variably won't persuade patrol members to deviate a fin’s breadth from their avowed intent — whatever that is.

Far less harrowing experiences than this have reduced strong men to weeping heaps of jelly. Abandoning fly-fishing, the angler may rush home for a spin-casting outfit. One of two things happens. Either the patrol will have moved on by the time the twitching angler gets back, or spoons, spinners, wobblers, Devons, jigglers, minnows, or whatever will elicit not the slightest response from patrol members. One day, I’m sure, a particularly peaceful Acacia Bay summer morning will resound to the unearthly scream, and then the echoing splash, of a poor man whom the patrol has literally driven over the edge. As they swim right and left almost under your feet, some three to six feet below the surface, the rainbows don’t appear to be after food. But if the right lure were put their way they would surely take it. Despite the frenzy those rainbows drive me into, I thought about them and their indifference almost with pleasure on a recent afternoon. For I was standing on the point trying mostly not to fall in, in the teeth of a bitter south-easterly that flung solid walls of rain over me.

My first cast brought a good fish up from the depths after the big Ham-

ill’s Killer. As I withdrew the fly from the waves the trout lunged at it, and missed.

Hoping the fish wohld head west, into the bay, I cast again, let the lure sink a few inches, began to retrieve, and immediately hooked the fish. Again, just a few nights ago, I fished not very hopefully off the point, and landed two fish — both taken, incidentally, on black and red fur flies tied according to the method originated by George Gatchell of Waitahanui, Then why can’t we take those patrolling rainbows of summer? As I stood on the point in that south-easterly, the rain sluicing down my parka, I decided that the Rainbow Patrol must be thrown off-balance. It would be the unexpected that would pick them off.Although the angler usually finds that they are not easily scared, he would have to be circumspect in presenting his lure. And what would that be? A big dry fly, apparently fallen from the trees. And twitched along the surface every so often. You see, it could stay floating for minutes at a time, all the while being twitched closer and closer to the angler. This method would completely do away with all the feverish casting and retrieving that eventually scares fish. And if the artificial doesn’t work Well, a cicada is bound to.