Graeme Christie | Tuesday, 18 August 2026
A video to show you areas you can take your rental car…photo’s show fish and a wild cat in the forest area.
No fishing this week. No park practice either. Work got me. Running businesses has a way of filling every gap that fishing might have occupied, and this week it filled all of them. So no trip report, and my late haul is no better that it was last Tuesday. Which is to say, improving, but not this week. Although I have a video of last week's fishing and it is interesting how once chasing fish is in the mix your park skills don't seem to work to the level of your best practice - something from Paul article this week as well. I also wanted to incorporate Martyn Whit’s observation on cell phone hollering, but not sure how to apply that to fishing, however I have sympathy for his view.
Anyway back to the article, I’m sitting at the desk and that gave me time to properly digest something that has been quietly reshaping my winter, and probably should reshape yours if you fish the North Island: the regulation changes.
Last winter, if you fished the Auckland/Waikato region, the default was simple. Rivers closed on the 30th of June and a short list stayed open. You fished the Waikato mainstem, a few named waters, or you waited for October. This winter the whole thing flipped. The 2025 Anglers Notice made the default open all year, and now only a handful of named sections still close for spawning. The bag limit dropped from 5 to 2 across the region at the same time, which seems a fair trade.
It seems like Fish and Game have been mandated for a more user friendly fishing experience and they have responded. Aware it seems some pressure at Government level and also from fisher people as well. No doubt there are some out there with a diametrically opposed view to me and also there is some variance to each region throughout the country which does give reason to the views, anyway back to the fishing.
What that opens up is the limestone country. Spring-fed streams running through farmland and forest, water that has never had a winter season in my fishing lifetime. No received wisdom about which pool fishes in August, because until now, nobody was allowed to find out.
Some of it is being found out already. A local angler put up a video a few weeks back from an unnamed tributary, minus 3 degrees and frosty, and had one of his best days of the winter: a tagged rainbow early on, then a proper brown to finish.
Two cautions before anyone loads the car. The fish are spawning. He spotted redds, and a redd is next season's fishing sitting in the gravel, so watch your wading and give paired-up fish on the stones a miss.And not everything opened: a few headwaters still close on the 30th of June and the hydro-lake tributary closures still apply. Read the notice before you go.
For my part, this lands on top of an unfinished discussion. Regular readers know I have spent some time in the winter swinging streamers down the lower Waikato for no follows, nada, on the theory that convenient water might also be good water. Two blank days say the jury is still out. I still have hope, but I am a hopeless optimist at times. The limestone streams are further from home, but they are small and sight-fishable, the sort of water where accuracy matters more than distance. All those hoops in the park might finally get their day. As Paul says, one day when you need the cast, are you ready?
So the homework continues. I have the maps half drawn already, the same routine as the Waikato ones: likely water marked off the maps, AI tidying it into a file for the phone. Whether life lets me test any of it before the season notice turns over again is another question. We'll see what the weekend allows.
Have a great week!