Anyone used a trout guide in the Rotorua area they can recommend?

You gunna ketch sum spotty fush Blinky?

Don't know if you really need a guide over there, they have some great info available on the Field and Game Commission document, and there's a couple of good books around.

They have a very organised fishing and hunting mob in the government there, they don't treat hunters like lepers either - it's part of their life.

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Sure am.
Going on a cruise just after Christmas, which stops at several ports around NZ, Rotorua being the only chance of a decent fish, time wise. Only got the one day onshore in the area.
Have fished Rotorua on several occasions before but only fly-fishing around the mouths of the feeder creeks and rivers. This time we have no transport or gear so I figured getting a guide would best our best chance of getting into the fish. As most of the party don’t fly-fish we a looking to troll the main lake or cast at the creek mouths from a boat. Hopefully get someone who will collect us and return us to the cruise ship at the end of the day as well.

Sounds like a blinder of a trip, half your luck. Awesome place to go isn't it. I enjoy trout fishing, and it's such a contrast to what we do here, gunna have to book a trip soon I think.

Good luck with it.

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As far as Trout fishing goes it is undoubtedly the best place on the planet. Even surpassing Tasmania, which has some pretty awesome Trouting.
The variety of salmonoids (sp) and they places they reside is unbelievable ( I once caught a 9 lb Brownie under a road bridge one street away from the main drag of Lower Hutt!)

One of my most memorable trips was a 2 week sojourn to Turangi, fishing the spawning run of Rainbows up the Tongariro in water that was that cold there were chunks of ice that had broken away from somewhere way upstream floating by. What really had the eyebrows raised was when three local jokers went hooting past on tractor tubes with only their boardies on!!!!!!!!!!
I caught three big rainbows where the highway crosses the river, put them up on the bank away from prying eyes of the ever present water rats, went back to collect them about 45 minutes later and they were frozen…..rock solid!

Talk about brass monkeys!

I'll second that, caught my best trout on the bank next to the carpark at Lake Rotoroa, on the South Island (nowhere near Rotorua) and could see fish swimming under many road bridges.

I found the place fairly easy to fish, although the big rivers were a challenge. No doubt the local guides would be worthwhile, nothing like local knowledge. Sounds like you had the place sussed - or you were using earthworms for bait

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Blinky

This mob may be worth a try for info. Its a Forum like this and I have found that they are pretty helpful.

http://www.fishing.net.nz/

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G'day Blinky.
I'm heading over in febuary next year for a wedding,then I'm doing a solo fly fishing trek around the place in my two man tent and a hire car(suzuki swift haha). I'm basing myself at Rotorua for a week,then I'll get the ferry down to the south and fish the rivers.

Been doing a bit of research,and signed up to a few NZ forums asking for tips. One guy at Rotorua who specialises in jigging for them offered to take me out after my first post on the forum! He reckons in summer months he locates them on his sounder and gets cricket scores of them jigging flies down deep. I'll see if I can find the forum now as I've forgotten which one it was as there's heaps of little one's. Maybe you could put a similar post up on there and he might offer to take you out? If not I'm sure they'll reccomend someone

Yep,that's the one i was thinking of

Ended up hiring the services of a Rotorua guide, bloke by the name of Gordon Randle.
Gordon has shown outstanding service organising everything for us, includes pick up from our ship, travel from Tauranga to Rotorua and return, lunches, all fishing gear and everything between!
I just hope his skill at finding us monster troot is as good as his organizational skills. If not, the other four members of our party are gunna slit my throat!

Good luck with the fushin Blinky. look forwaed to seeing a report.

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So how'd you go Blinky?

I'm starting to get eager,only 5 weeks to go

A great time had by all, I'll post someting soon.

A quick run down on our days trout fishing on Lake Rotorua; we kicked off around 9.30 with our driver collecting us from the cruise ship at Tauranga and heading off on the hour-long drive through the countryside to Rotorua. The first thing that hit us was the smell of the joint……. rotten egg gas/sulphur. The locals don’t call in Fartorua for nothing. I had been there a few times previously so I knew what to expect but the others were whinging big time, one even dry retching from the time we left the car until when we got out on the lake with a bit of breeze blowing.

Right next to the jetty there is a colour change where the shallow water meets a large drop off into the volcanic abyss, this is caused by the thermal activity stirring up the shallower water. I immediately went into Barra mode and wanted to troll the area before realizing that Trout are not so much ambush predators like our bad boys!

Our guide, Gordon, pointed the boat towards the airport end of the lake, after we flacked along for 20 minutes or so he said to run them out, the area was 46 ft deep and the bottom was an absolute desert, Gordon assured me the trout were here. It didn’t take long for me to agree, Sharrah scored the first Rainbow of the day, a nice plump little bloke. The gear we were using was a cross between harling and deep trolling equipment……….short slow action rod with a reel not unlike a small Alvey, line we used were two super fast sinking fly lines spliced together then attached to a dacron backing with a 2 metre mono leader rounding it off, all color coded at set lengths. Lures were a NZ version of the Tassie Devil with a fly on a dropper about a foot up the leader. The idea was to run out the two fly lines then another 20 m or so of dacron, Gordon said this put the lure at the optimum depth. We caught fish on both the Devil and the dropper fly. I asked Gordon about other lures, but he only used Tassie Devil types, he had tried other lures such as Rapalas and the like but had nowhere near the success as the Devils. His box was full of them, must have been a couple of thousand in there. He also fished specific colours in specific places, for example, a red Devil would be put on the outside rod, never, ever on the inside. Funny how fishermen all over the world have their little idiosyncrasies, all based on experience, I guess.

In short, we trolled a variety of spots ranging from the old volcano drop offs through featureless deep water to where crystal clear streams entered the lake. Different areas supposedly produced different varieties of trout, targeting the featureless areas and the stream mouths should give up Rainbows while the deep drop offs are the haunt of monster Browns, this is where Gordon spent most of the time trying to nail a big Brownie. It didn’t work for us, we caught Rainbows at every place we visited, no monsters but a few nice sized, beautifully condition specimens.

Stopped beside a lovely little stream for lunch, you could see the Trout holed up in the weeds and scooting across the sandy beds. Scene was spoilt a little by locals doing bombs off the bridge (into 3 ft of water) and circle work in the dirt carpark.

All in all we spent 5 hours on the lake and ended up with a pile of Rainbows, a great day was had by all!
Beat the hell out of traipsing around the Lord of The Rings set “Hobbiton” , that’s for sure! We left that to the Missus and the other boys, all big fans of LOTR. Speaking of LOTR, we visited a place called WETA workshops in Wellington, it is the company that made all the models, armour etc for the Orks and other nasties for the LOTR movies, fascinating place.

Got a little tiki tour around Rotorua on the way back to the ship, making it just in time to get a good seat at the Pool Bar in readiness for the “leaving Port party”

Thanks for the report Blinky. I've got 6 days at Rotorua in late feb,staying just out of town at the Waiteti trout stream holiday park. Apparently there's a good run of big browns up the stream itself atm,and hopefully the mouth will be a go'er on the fly of an evening. Can't wait! Only thing that's a concern is the fart smell! Last time I was there we spent about an hour in Rotorua, I remember it being pretty overwhelming ,although I was fairly hungover for memory.

After Rotorua it's down to Wellington to get the ferry to the South where I'll see if my rusty fly rod skills can tempt a few browns in the rivers.

Got a practise session this weekend up at Eucembene,was going crazy 2-3 weeks ago,but think it's died in the ass a bit now cos of the heat.