Tackle Tactics » Tips-Techniques » Adrian-Webbs-Trout-Tips » 500th Trout Not Easy
500th Trout Not Easy
I headed off to the Meander River to catch trout number 500 today... something that I thought would come nice and quick in the river. The thing is that I was pretty slack in getting up to start with and I wasn't in the river until 9:30am, after a 1.5km walk. The sun was well up and full on the clear water.
Still, feeling confident that my favourite river would give up the fish required, I was quick in starting the session off with a Mepps Aglia Furia, in a nice free flowing medium stretch of river. Twenty minutes later I still hadn't seen a fish, no follows, just nothing, there wasn't a fish in that beautiful stretch of water.
I tried a variety of spinners and even hard body lures... still nothing. I continued spin fishing my way upstream, giving the Okuma Helios SX20 reel and Okuma Celilo 6'6'' ULS 1-3kg trout rod a good workout, all to no avail. Still no signs of any trout.
It wasn't until 10:30am that I drew a nice brown out of a shaded area on the left hand side of the river. That trout was only half interested, before it turned and moved off. Seeing that trout did give me some hope of catching one here today after all.
I kept fishing my way upstream working the river in a 180 degree arc, using a variety of lures again, and all I could manage was one follow from a small brown that sat around a metre or so off the back of the lure. Fishing in full sun and clear water, was that the reason for the lack of trout... I doubt it, the trout just weren't in this area today.
Perhaps I should have fished the fast water runs well upstream, that I had originally planned to do the night before. With my lower back and hips not being all that flash though this morning, I didn't want to make them any worse. It just was not worth it with the time that was left in the trout season. I fished on until 11:30am, before deciding to get out and head elsewhere. I was still thinking about the fast water runs and knew that it was the area where I would catch the trout I needed... once again I said no.
On the walk back to the car I was going through quite a few ideas of what areas of the Meander River I'd head off to. I had three in mind. One I ruled out because it would be in full sun, while the other two required a bit of hard bush bashing to get to and I wasn't really feeling up to that after having a kilometre walk back to the car.
Then it hit me... try a small creek that's on my way home. It should have a decent flow of cold water flowing in it that comes down from the highlands. So, that's what I did and on my arrival I was right, there was a nice flow of cold water in it.
It was just on 11:40am by the time I hopped into the creek and I had a hit and miss on the very first cast using the #00 Gold Aglia spinner. This was just what I was hoping for, a hit from a trout first up. After that I had several follows and light taps on the spinner but they weren't really aggressive fish.
I decided I would have to go for a small floating hard body lure if I was going to get hold of a trout or two... just the one trout would do for now anyway. I was now very confident that it was only a matter of time before I'd have a trout hooked and landed.
I worked the first couple of wide, slow flowing runs and had a few follows from some very skittish trout. They were here but still no signs of aggression yet. It wasn't until I moved into a deeper, narrow stretch of water that I had my first hook up of the day.
At last it was fish on and a nice medium size brown trout it was too. I had my 500th trout of the 2018/19 season in the net! It was a clean well-conditioned 320 gram brown. I was stoked that I had finally reached the mark set, once I realised I wasn't going to reach 600 for the season. Every fish I caught now was an added bonus to my seasons tally. Six minutes later I had my second brown on for the day and today's trout drought was broken at last. Nine minutes after releasing the second brown I had my third one in the net.
Three trout in fifteen minutes couldn't have been better, even when those trout weren't all that aggressive. They were coming up behind the small hard body lure and lightly nipping at the tail end of the lure. What I had to do was, as they came up behind the lure, I stopped the retrieve and gave the floating lure a very light twitch and that's when they grabbed it and I set the hooks.
I missed another three trout, before deciding to call it a day. I had achieved what I set out to do today and was quite happy to head back to the car. On the walk back I put the little Gold #00 Aglia back on as that's the lure I'll probably start off with on my next trip to a river. I was almost back at the car when I noticed a small circle appear in a little backwater, so I flicked the Aglia spinner into it. The lure was quickly taken and I had my forth trout hooked and landed. It was another medium size trout and a good ending to a day that started off so poorly... a day that I won't forget for a while.
Being a user of the Mepps blade spinners, that catch 95% of my trout throughout the season, there are those times when one just has to try a hard body lure. Today was one of those days and a good thing was the session ended with the Mepps lure catching the last trout of the day.
Adrian (meppstas)