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Aggressive Small Trout Make The Numbers
By Adrian (meppstas) Webb
The forecast was for rain today and after sitting around waiting for it to arrive, I decided to head off for a quick spin session in a small river on private property. I had no idea how high the water level would be until I got there. One thing I did know was that there wouldn't be low flowing water after the recent rains we've had. It was 2:10pm when I finally reached my entry point and could not believe the damage caused from flooding a couple of weeks ago.
For starters. there used to be a bridge across the river where I entered it, and it was gone! The riverbanks were washed away and looking up the river I could see that there were quite a few large trees laying across the river. There was certainly a lot of flood damage from what I could see. I was hoping that it hadn't wiped out the trout, like it did back in 2016 when we had record flooding here.
The water level was running at a nice medium height and a dark tannin colour, so I started the session off with a #00 White Miller coloured Mepps Bug inline spinner, the same one that did well on the trout yesterday in another tannin stream. The first cast was straight up the centre of the river and halfway into the retrieve a small/medium size trout took it and tossed the lure just as fast.
From there on I had several soft hits from trout but just couldn't get a hook up. I changed over to a gold #00 Aglia Mouche Noire spinner. The same result, I could not get a hook up. The same thing happened again when I tried a copper #00 Aglia spinner. I was getting a little frustrated, the trout were there, and they were aggressive, but just not taking the spinner well. It was like they were being more territorial than hungry.
Twenty-five minutes without a trout being caught, wasn't going down all that well with me. Then I arrived at the stretch of water that had the large fallen Eucalyptus trees across it. The good thing was that there was enough room for me to go under them. It wasn't until I was getting closer to them that I found the water was much deeper than I had expected. The closer I got to them, the deeper the water became.
At one stage I had my fishing vest raised up over my shoulders to keep it dry. I was also walking on my toes to keep the water below the top of my waders. Taking it very slow and steady, I finally made my way past the fallen trees and into shallow water. That's not where it ended though. No sooner had I got past the fallen trees and there was a massive log jam that I had to make my way over.
There was no way around it either, so I had no choice but to climb over it, which it did. Once over it I looked back and thought to myself, at my age (76) why the hell do I put myself through this. Anyway, that's what I did. The good thing was that the water ahead of me was no more than a metre in depth from here on. The only problem was that I now had to contend with a rocky river bottom, and the rocks were loose and rolled under foot. The flood had washed all the fine gravel out of the riverbed.
This stretch of water was also narrow, and the flow was much faster, so I went for a change of lure as well. It was a toss-up between the #0 Aglia Fluo Micropigments rainbow and the #0 Aglia Fluo Micropigments brown inline spinner. I chose the latter. It couldn't have been a better decision too, as on the first cast and retrieve I had a soft hit and miss. The second cast and retrieve resulted in an instant hook up and at 2:25pm I had my first trout in the net.
From then on, the trout were more prolific in the river. Most were very small, aggressive trout, and several of them actually darted in front of the larger trout and took the spinner. I did catch the odd medium size well-conditioned trout, in between catching those little fish. By the time I reached the area where I had parked my car, I had caught and released nine trout, which I was pretty satisfied with. It could have been more had I not hooked and lost several others.
Once back at the car, I was about to get out of the waders and then decided to try another stretch of river a couple of kilometres further downstream. As I approached the river, I could see the rain clouds weren't all that far off, so I had to get a move on. The first water that I fished was next to the bridge and right on the opposite side of the river was a nice narrow flat water. That's where my first cast went.
On the retrieve a trout came out and had a go at the anti-kink, so I had to give the rod a quick jerk to get the Aglia Fluo Micropigments brown spinner in front of the trout. That worked a treat as the trout took it straight away. It was a beautifully coloured, solid fish too, that fought hard in the fast water, before I eased it into the shallows and onto the riverbank. It was also the fish of the day. From here on I had to get a hurry on as the rain clouds moved closer and rain wasn't all that far off now.
The river ahead of me was quite open and there were plenty of small trout jumping everywhere. I went on to catch three more as the rain arrived. The rain was quite heavy, so I called it a day. By the time I reached the car I was drenched. I hopped in the car and drove home in my full wading gear. The good thing that came out of the spin session was seeing so many small trout in the river after the flood. It's good for the future of the river.
Another thirteen trout caught and released today was great, even though most of them were small. They helped to take my season tally to 124 so far for the season, which I'm happy with. This time last season I had only caught and released 72 trout, so it's always nice to be ahead of the previous season.
Adrian (meppstas)
Equipment Used:
Okuma Celilo Finesse Spin Rods - ULS 1-3kg
Okuma ITX Carbon Spin Reels - ITX-1000
Platypus Pulse Mono – 4lb
Platypus Stealth FC Leader – 4lb
Mepps Inline Spinners -
Mepps Aglia Fluo Micropigments