Tackle Tactics » Tips-Techniques » Adrian-Webbs-Trout-Tips » Brown Trout go for Gold
Brown Trout go for Gold
After some reasonable rainfall over the past couple of days, I thought it was worth checking out a small stream to see if it would give up a trout or two. Seeing as we've had a long dry spring and summer, and very little rain into autumn, I was more interested to see if the trout had survived the low, warm water levels in this small stream.
Today was mainly overcast, with strong gusty winds up to 35kph and rain showers, so that's why I had a late 3:15pm start. It was only 10 degrees, with a wind chill of 6.5 degrees. The water level was at a good wading height and a very dark tannin colour, so I went for a small Mepps #00 gold Aglia spinner.
It was a quiet start, with just a couple of soft hit and misses over the first fifty metres or so. It took half an hour before I picked up my first beautifully coloured little wild brown trout, a well-conditioned plump fish. Ten minutes later I had another small brown take the gold Aglia spinner. Two fish now landed was good. Even though the trout were small, it was great to see that there are signs that some trout have made it through the dry season. I was hoping there were a lot more trout that made it too and only time would tell as I fished on.
In between rain showers I continued to fish my way upstream and I picked up a trout every fifteen to twenty minutes, which I was stoked with. The trout were certainly here and in reasonably good numbers. The wind was still howling, which made casting the little 1.5 gram gold Aglia pretty difficult. Several times, just as I cast the lure, a wind gust would hit and carry the lure into the tea trees that lined the river banks.
There was a time when the fishing went quiet again, however that didn't last very long and I soon picked up a few more trout. The rain was on and off and the wind hadn't eased off all that much either. I was really feeling the cold now and being wet wasn't helping. I could see there was more rain moving in, as the sky grew darker in the west and so I decided to fish another couple of stretches of river and then call it a day.
I was glad I did fish on a little longer when a solid brown took the spinner in a small piece of river that required a perfect cast with the lure. That small water had plenty of low hanging tea trees over it and there wasn't any margin for error at all... and the cast had to be spot on. It was a perfect cast that resulted in the solid brown rising up and from some bull rushes as I retrieved the gold Aglia past them.
It was by far one of my better fish taken in this little stream for a long time. It was a beautifully coloured brown trout that weighed 605 grams. Like all of the trout I catch, it was released for another day. After that I caught and released one small brown, making it eleven trout over the two and a half hours in the river. As the weather drew closer and it became darker I headed back to the car, feeling quite satisfied with how the spin session went and also happy to see the trout were still here.
Adrian (meppstas)
Equipment used:
Okuma Celilo ULS 6' 1-3kg trout rod
Okuma Ceymar C-10 reel
Platypus Super 100 mono line
Mepps inline spinners