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A Tough Morning Chasing Trout
By Adrian (meppstas) Webb
Adrian (meppstas) shares a session from the Tassie trout season, where the bite was tough due to traffic on the river, and persistence and working through a few lures allowed him to still land half a dozen fish.
The weather here in Tasmania had been great over the past few days and there were no signs of a change until the end of the week, so this morning I hit the Meander River at 8:05 am. The sky was clear, the frost was heavy, and it was quite cold to start with, warming up as the morning went on. The first stretch of water, that I fished with a #0 gold Mepps Black Fury, is one that has only given up one trout in five trips. All I could manage in it this morning was a soft hit, from a reasonable size brown trout. I knew that I should have bypassed it, however I still wanted to see if it had changed for the better. It hadn't, it was still the same.
This river had a lot of traffic over the past week, along with the Australian Fly Fishing Championships being held on it, so I felt I was in for a tough day chasing the trout this morning. I tried several different Mepps spinners and even went for a hard body lure, and I still couldn't draw the attention of a trout. They just weren't here. It wasn't until I reached a shaded fast water run and decided to go with a #00 Mepps White Miller Bug spinner, that I caught my first trout of the morning at 9:25am. That trout was taken in a shallow, shaded area, on the right-hand side of a fast water run. The trout itself came out of nowhere and took the spinner on the first cast and retrieve. It was a nice medium size brown.
A little further upstream, after making my way across the river to the left-hand side, I had a direct cast upstream. On the retrieve the Mepps Bug did its job again as a larger trout grabbed hold of it. After a short battle with this fish, I had it in the net. This trout was a beautiful coloured, wild brown trout and in top condition. The stretch of water that it was caught in has never let me down. Every time I've flicked a Mepps spinner into it I've caught trout.
The next long stretch of water ahead of me was one that had always given up a few trout. In fact, the last couple of times that I’ve fished it I've caught a total of eleven trout. I was feeling pretty confident that it would do the same again today. When I was halfway up this medium flowing stretch of water and not seeing a trout, I had a gut feeling that it wasn't going to give up a fish today. My only chance of catching one in it was at the headwaters and I worked over every bit of the head water, without a sign of a trout.
It was time to move on upstream and on the way, I changed to a #00 gold Mepps Aglia spinner. In one of the two fast waters that I fished I did have a follow from a non-aggressive trout, and that was it for another thirty minutes or so. It wasn't until 10:35 am that I picked up the third trout. This fish was taken in a small flat water, in a very fast water run. This was the fish of the day, and it did its best to toss the little gold Aglia. The pull of the fast water on that fish was hard and I thought I would lose the fish as it made several leaps and then thrashed about on the surface. Thankfully, the small treble held its own on this solid 460g brown trout and it was soon in the net.
Ten minutes later, while fishing a similar stretch of water, I was onto another solid brown. That fish was holding out in a small pocket of water close to the riverbank. Once released, I fished my way upstream for another five minutes, before calling it a day. The water ahead was shallow, in full sun, and I knew that it wasn't worth going any further up the river.
On the way back to the car, which was around one and a half kilometres away, I came across a small creek. That small creek gave up two more brown trout, both small/medium, legal-size fish. Half a dozen trout caught and released over three hours wasn't what I was hoping for, but then again, with the heavy amount of fishing the river has had to put up with, I suppose it was a good number after all.
Adrian (meppstas)
Equipment Used During the Trout Season:
TT Red Belly Spin Rods – RBS702L 7’ 1-3kg 2pce
Okuma Celilo Finesse Spin Rods – 1-3kg
Okuma ITX Carbon Spin Reels – ITX-1000
Okuma Epixor XT Spin Reels - EXPT-20
Okuma Ceymar HD Spin Reels – CHD-1000HA
Platypus Pulse Mono Premium Nylon Monofilament Fishing Line
Platypus Super 100 Nylon Monofilament Fishing Line
Platypus Pre-Test Nylon Monofilament Fishing Line
Platypus Stealth FC Fluorocarbon Leader
Mepps Inline Spinners