Moerangi River Trout Fishing
The Moerangi River is fairly remote tributary of the upper Waiau river that flows through the Whirinaki Forest Park. Holds a good population of large rainbow trout. This river can be accessed by tramping or helicopter. There are two huts on the river, the Moerangi in the very upper reaches and Rogers hut just before the Moerangi joins with the Mangakahika river.
The trout in the Moerangi are almost all rainbows. And with the exception of a couple of tiddlers all of the trout I've seen and caught from here have been over 3 pounds. The biggest one I've caught was about 7 pounds so there is probably a reasonable chance of catching a trophy trout from this river.
On my first trip to this river it took a while to start catching fish, I was simply looking and fishing in the wrong places. I had heard it held mostly rainbows so I was expecting them to be in the deeper parts of the river, after fishing for two hours with no success I happened to spot a rainbow in a little pocket behind a fallen tree in water about 20cm deep and hardly any current. There were a lot of trees in the way and wasn't able to catch that one. But I started looking in some more unusual places more like you would if there were brown trout around, once I did this I started to find trout and they were quite keen to take a royal wulff off the surface even though it was pouring with rain. The rivers around here seem to handle quite a lot of rain before getting coloured up.
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