386 FLY FISHING AND SPINNING 



grandeur and beauty. Brown trout are not common, 

 but rainbow trout from 4 to 20 pounds are killed in this 

 river. Both wet and dry fly should be used. The most 

 desirable way of fishing this river is to obtain Maori guides 

 with canoes, start well up towards the source, and dropping 

 down with the current, fish and camp as fancy dictates. 

 Sometimes, it maybe, the main river will be joined by some 

 beautiful and trout-abounding streams, but whether fishing 

 these with the dry fly, the glides with the wet, or spinning 

 in the rougher water of the rapids, sport, and sport of the 

 best, will be there, and in a profusion sufficient to glut the 

 appetite of the most determined record hunter. If one 

 of the party happens to be a good cook, and if rifles and guns 

 are taken, the fisherman will be certain that his larder will 

 be supplied at times with other forms of food. 



Leaving the Wanganui, the best known resort for fisher- 

 men, there is the Taupo or the Rotorua country where 

 the tourist will be in the midst of the wildest and most 

 volcanic part of the thermal district, and in the centre of 

 probably the best and most prolific trout fishing in the world. 

 For two or three years, now happily past, in some of the 

 lakes of the Rotorua district the fish seemed to be troubled 

 by disease, a great many of those caught presenting the 

 appearance rather of kelts than of healthy fish ; this may 

 perhaps have been due to the tremendous slaughter which 

 had been going on during the preceding years. Mr. Donne, 

 for a long time the head of the New Zealand Agency and 

 one of the best known sportsmen in New Zealand, considers, 

 and with reason, that the better and stronger fish were 

 naturally the first to seize the bait and the first to be caught 

 and it was not until these began to be killed off that the 

 leaner and poorer ones began to be in evidence. Mr. Donne, 

 who is now the Representative of Emigration at the High 

 Commissioner's Office in Victoria Street, London, was the 



