TONGARIRO FISHING.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIX, Issue 21131, 14 March 1932, Page 10

TONGARIRO FISHING.

WORLD'S FINEST STREAM. MR. ZANE GREY'S OPINION. RHAPSODY ON ITS BEAUTY. A few American anglers have cast a (ly over the crystal waters of the Tongaviro; all have read or heard of this magnificent river, and have longed to prove for themselves tho fame which seems incredible, writes Mr. Zane Grey in an article, a copy of which has been sent to the Herald. The title is " Most Famous and Beautiful Trout Stream in the World." It is my pleasant task to describe the Tongariro, if any writer can catch in mere words its illusive charm, its strange music, its contrast to all other trout waters; and to verify the extravagant claims of all fly fishermen who have been fortunate enough to fish it. But first let mo bo narrative for a single moment. I once saw Fred Burnham, the great Rogue River expert, wade into the Log Pool of the Tongariro—that exquisite and extraordinary pool which I could not describe—and, because of his giant stature, wade farther out on tho gradually deepening bar than the dozen or more English and New Zealand anglers who were whipping the water, and by reason of his incomparable skill in casting, drop his fly in the deep current under the far bank. A red-sided rainbow, as if welcoming this exponent of Oregon, from whence the progenitors of all Tongariro trout had come, flashed up to swirl and strike, and then to leap his savage way to exhaustion, down at the far end of the pool, Twelve pounds! Unique Angling. I saw Burnham wade in again as bofore, and on his third cast raise and hook another American rainbow, that had added to his heritage a wild spirit and great weight and exceeding strength from the more than ice-cold and peculiarly vita) water of the Tongariro. And as, one by one, the other anglers, recognising an opportunity seldom met in a life-time, waded out to watch from the bank, Burnham duplicated and quadrupled and magnified his performance until ho had caught the limit—twentyfive magnificent rainbow that averaged nine pounds. There is no other trout stream or salmon river or lake in the world where such an angling achievement can bo approached. The Tongariro is only about twenty miles long. It has no tributaries of any importance. It flows from under snowclad Mount Ruapehu, and runs for all its upper length between high banks of pumice-stone. The whole terrain of that region is dominated by the active volcano Ngauruhoe; and in ages past layer on layer of pumice has been deposited until in some places cliffs one hundred feet high and more rise above the river. . . . A Day Upstream.

Some few miles of this river upstream I have seen, but was never near it-s source. My brother, R. C. Grey, and my boy, Romer, and Wiffen, our guide, and I played a game that day. It was to break through the heavy forests and risk our lives on steep cliffs of soft pumice-stone to see .who could spot the most and biggest trout. That was a day. I won. I found one channel of glancing water, sliding ten feet deep over a gravel bed, that resembled an exquisite mosaic laid by hand, in which I espied more than two score great rainbows. The water was so transparent that it might as well have been air. Some of these trout would have exceeded 181b. in weight. Huge, dark, racy-looking fish, they lay in rows along the bottom, sometimes moving, dropping back, wavering in tho current .... And everywhere on down tho river, when we could approach the bank, we spotted the wavering shadows of trout. This happened in early April, before the big run had started upstream. Beauty of Tongariro. The beauty of the Tongariro is on a par with its fishing possibilities. The pumice ston fi cliffs resembled painted walls and their reflection iu the magnifying crystal waters resembled painted windows. And the foliage along this river is of so rich a dark, deep, shiny green, the ti forests so fine of texture and so colourfully white and pink with tiny blossoms, as lovely as the chamice of Catalina, and the dense copses of giant ferns, lacy as pine-needles on the bough, all seemed to belong protectingly to the Tongariro alone, to hide its treasures of emerald pools and aquamarine rapids, to preserve its beauty and its rainbows from the greed of sportsmen. Through this stretch of tangled forests it winds along in an utter solitude, broken only by the melody of the bellbird and the tui, and tho mellow roar of rapids. And at last it slides out into the open, to linger in foam-flecked pools and spread wide over bars and split around green islands and run deep and black under sheer gray walls, at last to wearv of restraint and rush madly down, a turbulent green-white spirit-forsaken river. • • Record of Catches. r always preferred to camp. On our last trip wo spent seven weeks on this never-to-be-forgotten river. From my tent on tho bank it was less than fifty stops down to the pool which I fished every day, in the morning several hours, and late, in the, afternoon until after dark. During this sojourn I caught 87 trout with an average of seven pounds. This seems extraordinary. But it was nothing. I am an expert salt-water angler, but my boys claim I am not so "hot" with a fly-rod. I lost 153 trout while I was landing tho 87, and many a ten, twelve and thirteen-poundcr went down the, rapids decorated with my (lies. All in that one pool by our camp. Captain Mitchell had the largest score; Romer got 134, topping tho list with a record 15|lh rainbow caught on a fiveounce rod. . . .

It is quite needless to multiply examples. The thing for trout anglers is to go to New Zealand and spend some of these long, bright, glamorous afternoons on the Tongariro. I have been four times—four long voyages down the blue lanes of the Pacific—but' I am going again.