Hawke's Bay Fishing News November 11

Tutira spring liberation
On October 28 a couple of young students from Tutira School assisted in the liberation of 2250 rainbow and 500 brown trout into Lake Tutira.
All of these browns and 500 rainbows were tagged as part of the Datawatch programme. Anglers must remember that when they catch and keep any of the tagged trout found in the lake, they need to record the length and weight of the trout along with the tag number (e.g. S08) and pass this information on to Fish & Game.
In doing so, you will enter the draw to win a free full season fishing licence for the following season.
The Datawatch programme helps monitor the health of the fishery and this is vitally important as the Hydrilla eradication programme progresses and the lake goes through many changes.

High recruitment
Since the peak spawning season, Hawke’s Bay trout fisheries have had the benefit of settled weather – a key ingredient for successful recruitment.
Freshes are important as they remove any sediment or algae build ups that may smother eggs or newly hatched alevin. But as soon as movement of the gravel within the stream bed start to occur that’s when trouble starts.
The settled weather has meant only small downpours of rain have occurred, providing the perfect freshes to assist in egg incubation and the subsequent emergence of fry.
Some anglers have reported seeing large numbers of fry in some Hawke’s Bay rivers. This is great to see and bodes well for the future of these fisheries.

Ruataniwha Water Storage Project –Further trout studies
Following a meeting with Fish & Game, Hawke’s bay Regional Council, storage project staff and other fisheries experts, it was decided that further monitoring of the Tukituki trout fishery was required to get a higher level of understanding of the fishery and how a large dam on the Makaroro River will affect that fishery.
To support the spawning survey that had been completed it was decided that the next main study would be on recruitment and how tributaries stack up against each other. While not all tributaries can be looked at, the difference in recruitment between stable and unstable rivers will be a major part of this exercise and this will help in being able to make informed estimates on how non-surveyed tributaries are expected to preform and their importance to the overall fishery.

Other areas of study to be looked at will potentially include the importance of the Makaroro and its cool water for summer refuge and also trout habitat mapping.