A FINE TROUT STREAM.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LI, Issue 15646, 27 June 1914, Page 1 (Supplement)

A FINE TROUT STREAM.

BY r.c.E.

I do not think tho name of the stream is on any map, but it is locally known as the Mangamingi. It rises on the edge of the Tokoroa Plateau, in the high pumice country beyond Lichfield, and drops by cascade and rapid into the Pokaiwhenua. It is, I think, one of the finest trout streams in New Zealand. One may not win from it big baskets, but its fish, for size and quality and gameness, are unrivalled.

The waters of the Mangamingi arc crystal clear, of icy coolness and incredible swiftness. In its upper course it flows through a shallow valley, and one can see the springs that feed it gushing from its low banks. In its lower part it hurries through miniature gorges flanked with fantastic cliffs and bluffs of grey rhy'olite.

One of tho charms of the Mangamingi is its solitude. Savo one house, but recently built, there is no Bign of habitation in all tho wide-spreading pumice country which stretches southward to Taupo; and save for the newly grassed, newly stocked paddocks of Matanuku Downs, there is no evidence of human civilisation. Tho wild horses grazing on the sedges by the stream, the blue mountain duck, a few teal, brilliant kingfishers, and the friendly fantail, are apparently tho only living things there. One never sees a trout in the water until it is hooked and makes its first wild rush to the surface.

The frontier homestead of "Matanuku Downs" stands on a terrace within a stone's throw of the Mangamingi, and just below the house is some perfect fishing water. Tho stream herp Blackens in its mad race for a while, and runs merely swift and deep between low banks green with close-fed clovers and grasses. I do not know how many fish I have taken from this short reach of waterfourpounders, five-pounders, six and sevenpounders, perfect in condition and colour, gamo to their strong backbono and delicious in flavour. Below the homestead tho stream gathers pace again, and leaps over a lovel-edged rock into a Kg pool. This pool always offered me sport; a largo number of small fish, eager for adventure into unknown regions, are barred here by the shoer fall of water, and at times lush tho fly with hungry recklessness. And there are big fish too. I remember to ray sorrow fooling with these small fry in the swirling waters, when thoro was a fierce rush, a too sudden desire to check, and I was minus a new cast and two favourite flies. At the tail of the pool tho water is almost still and impossible to fish on account of the steep, rocky banks, so big trout rise thero when they, aro rising nowhere else. Below this still reach the stream slides over a rhyolite slope, not unlike that up which great John Ridd climbed to meet Lorna Doone, and thunders by secret ways to emerge in tho open valley as a long succession of ripples— enhancing fly wator. From there to where it meets tlie Pokaiwhenua rushing from its dark gorges tho Mangamingi is a sequence of pools and rapids. To fish this part of the stream requires patience and skill. In places one has to steer the rod through narrow wild horse tracks among the tall manuka, or scramble round cliffs amid tangles of fern. But always there iB the joy of coming across some hidden pool where Big fish lie, or finding long runs of open water, where ono can throw a fly with the surety of a rise. I had some noble sport in this part of tho Mangamingi, and more than onto worked right down to the Pokaiwhenua for the evening's dry fly fishing, but I am sorry to say the Pokai, as it is familiarly called, is by no means so well stockod as it was a few years ago, and it is ovidently time that the Acclimatisation Society turned into it a few thousand yearlings, Thero is another thing which tho Acclimatisation Society or the Government, or whoever is responsible for our angling attractions, should do, and that is, stock the smaller streams and tho upper part of the larger streams with burn trout. These delicious, guuio littlo fish should thrive admirably in the shallow, swift waters, of the upland pumice country, and would provide everlasting sport to those who do not believe that the only joy of sport is found in big fish and heavy baskets. I have paid my tribute to tho attractions of the Mangamingi as a fishing stream, but I have to acknowledge that it owes some of its charm to the country through which it runs, and to tho delightful climate which the high altitude and the dry soil give it. There is, too, the fascination ol long distances and wide, open spaces, and, apart from these things, there is the interest of pioneer settlement. My host, the frontier settler, is engaged in turning the long-despised pumice country into farms. He has broken some hundreds of acres of wild laud into grass and crop, and others aro following suit. In a little while the Mangamingi will have lost all its air of isolation. Tho scrub and tho flax on its banks will disappear, and ono may be able to walk along its course over smooth grass sward. It may be heavily stocked with fish and easily fishable, but it will never in its new guise appeal to mo as it appeals to me, now as. the. stream above all other