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Black Fury and Autumn Trout
By Adrian (meppstas) Webb
With the morning being mainly sunny, I decided not to go trout fishing until the cloud cover moved in just after midday. It was 1:45pm by the time I hit a small tannin stream, that still had more water in it than I had expected. The main reason that I headed to the small stream was that I thought Round Five of the Australian Fly Fishing Championships was being held this weekend, so the areas (Mersey and Meander Rivers) that I like to fish would be closed to the local/regular trout fishers.
As I made the twenty-minute walk to the stream, I was thinking about what Mepps inline spinner I would go to this afternoon. Just before I entered the water, it was a copper Mepps #00 (1.5g) Black Fury that I chose to start the spin session with. The Black Fury inline spinner has a narrow blade, that works really well in small streams with shallow water. As for choosing the copper colour, well that's just because the first stretch of water was an open, shallow and a light tannin colour. Not only that, the dull and overcast conditions were ideal for both the copper and gold blade Black Fury inline spinners. It just so happened that the first lure I saw when I opened the small lure box was the copper Black Fury and that was the main reason why it was my first choice.
With the water level being so low, the slightest movement in the stream was enough to send trout darting off every so often. The rocky, gravelly bottom didn't help either. Being a small, narrow stream, that’s lined with a mass of overhanging dogwood and tea trees along both sides of it, not to mention the blackberry bushes, meant long casting was out of the question to start with. The session didn't start off all that well, when I had a few trout follow the spinner in the first stretch of water without a single hit from any of them.
It wasn't until I had made my way through a very narrow, shallow run, that I had enough space to flick the Black Fury spinner into a shallow pocket of water to the left of me. No sooner had the little copper spinner hit the water and it was smashed hard and fast. Like all small streams it wasn't a large fish, just a small/medium size, well-conditioned brown. As always, when trout fishing a small stream or a large river, it's always a good feeling when the first trout of the spin session is caught and in the net.
After the release of that trout, I had a couple of hits and spooked a few more trout in another small stretch of water. That was enough to change over to the #00 gold Mepps Black Fury spinner. The change of colour was a good one. No sooner had I made the change and the next cast into the same stretch of water resulted in an instant hook up. It was only a small brown. Not long after its release I picked up another small trout in the same stretch of water.
The cloud cover was looking a little heavier than when I first hopped into the stream and with rain forecast for later in the day, it was looking like it may arrive sooner rather than later. As I bypassed a couple of very shallow runs, a couple of small trout darted off down past me. The trout were certainly here in good numbers, it was just a matter of getting the lightweight spinner into the water without spooking them.
I knew that I had several deeper stretches of water ahead of me that would more than likely be holding a trout or two... and they did. I caught and released three trout in them, with the best one weighing in at a nice 490 grams. I then had a bit of a lull in the fishing. I was having hits from the trout, but for some reason I just couldn't hook them. I was sure it had a lot to do with the water being shallow. The trout would come hard and fast at the gold-coloured Black Fury spinner and have a crack at it as they turned, missing being hooked. It's a regular occurrence when fishing these small shallow streams and as much as it frustrates me, one must take the good with the bad. It's just a part of trout fishing.
There was a quiet period with the trout fishing, before it picked up and I started catching them again on a regular basis, which was good. Before I knew it, I had reached double figures. I did make a mess of it at one stage though, when I hooked a nice solid trout in a narrow, tight stretch of water. Once hooked the trout headed straight back toward me and then ran into a tight area that was full of small fallen tree branches. There was no way that I was going to get it out unless I put the rod down and sorted it out by hand.
At the time I was filming the fish in the snagged area, I took too long to turn the camera off to free the trout from the snag and before I knew it, the line parted ways. The trout was gone and so was the little Mepps Black Fury spinner. Talk about dumb, that was about as dumb as it could get. All I had to do was slip the net into where the trout was snagged, but instead I continued to film it, while laughing at the same time. So, that cost me the fish as well as the little gold Black Fury inline spinner. I did give myself a stern talking to once it happened.
From then on, I continued to catch a few more trout on a new gold Black Fury, taking my catch to thirteen and that's where it ended. Once at thirteen I couldn't get off it. I hooked and lost a couple more trout, before light rain appeared, and the wind picked up. That's when I called it a day and I made my way back to the car.
The spin session actually turned out to be much better than I had expected, given the low water level, with thirteen trout being caught and released. The trout themselves were all in top condition, which was good to see, so I will return here again later. With rain and poor weather forecast over the next four days, I doubted that I would be back in a river until that passed by. With wind gusting up to 100 kph included in the weather report, that's enough to keep anyone at home.
Adrian (meppstas)
Equipment Used Today:
Okuma Celilo Finesse Spin Rods – Ultra Light Spin 1-3kg
Okuma ITX Carbon Spin Reels - ITX-1000
Platypus Pulse Mono
Platypus Stealth FC Fluorocarbon Leader
Mepps Inline Spinners -
Mepps Black Fury Inline Spinners