Central North Island - Freshwater

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Freshwater: Central North Island - March
Note: If map is showing it is created by LINZ / New Zealand Hydrographic Authority and made available by Creative Commons 3.0. Maps should not be used for navigation

Lake temperatures remain very high as we go into March. They will slowly cool over the next few weeks but until then the fish have gone much deeper in many areas with depths being fished between 50-60 metres.

The key is being prepared to stay on the move until you find the right depth and mark it.

Jigging remains the main method at the moment as it gets right down where the fish are feeding. Downriggers set deep will also be enjoying some good fishing with Spotty Gold, Black Toby and white and silver lures all accounting for some good fish.

I predict that the lake will spring back to full action as the water temperature cools down and the thermocline gets back up to the 30-35 meter mark. March going into early April can often be the best 2 months of the year on the great lake.

The local fly fishing continues to be extremely good with some magnificent dry fly action on the Passion Vine Hopper on most of our rivers.

Big stimmies are still taking their fair share of fish but most of the dry fly action is now based on the smaller more imitative patterns. We can also expect to see the odd mayfly hatch as the weather cools just before winter.

It’s a great time of the year as the fish get their appetite back and they really start to feed hard out as winter approaches. I would still be fishing the shallower well oxygenated areas with a dry or a dry/dropper.

At the time of writing the upper reaches of some of our back country rivers are very skinny and weedy and fishing the lower to middle reaches are proving more productive.

The lakes should slowly start to cool down through March and should start to perform again as wee head into late autumn winter.

There is some fantastic fishing to look forward to at this time of the year and around Taupo even more exciting is the prospect of the winter fishing within the region. I predict it is going to be phenominal!!

We will be stocking the very latest in Czech and Spey this year and look forward to helping all those anglers wanting to give these deadly methods a go this winter.

Look forward to seeing you all in store soon.

Tight lines to all

The team at Fly & Gun Hunting and Fishing Taupo

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