Tackle Tactics » Tips-Techniques » Adrian-Webbs-Trout-Tips » Browns, Rainbows, and the Bug

Browns, Rainbows, and the Bug

By Adrian (meppstas) Webb

Adrian shares with us a trip from earlier in the Tassie trout season, where accessing the river proved more of a challenge at times than landing the trout that he was searching for. Fish on!

Another mainly dull, overcast, and mild day saw me heading off to the upper Mersey River in the hunt for a few more browns and hopefully some rainbows as well. To reach the stretch of water that I wanted to fish I had a good two-kilometre walk. Once there it also required a bit of bush bashing in some tough terrain. Being another mid-afternoon start, it was 2:15 pm by the time I made it to the river, where I had a couple of warm up casts and retrieves, before I had to do the bush bashing to the 300m stretch of river that I wanted to fish.

During the few warm up casts and retrieves I did have a couple of small/medium size brown trout follow the Mepps March Brown coloured Bug spinner for a short distance, before they moved off. Seeing those trout lifted my spirits and I was feeling quite confident that the faster flowing water that I was heading to would give up a few fish today. Thankfully, getting to my starting point wasn't as bad as I thought it would be, due to the floods a few months back. The debris that was present last time I fished here was gone.

Once there, and looking upstream, I could see that the rest of the river I was to fish wasn't going to be all that easy to get to, due to a lot of debris along the riverbank. Most of the river that I was going to fish was perfect for casting and drifting the inline spinner and it only took a few casts and drifts before I had a fish take the Bug. It was a nice rainbow trout that had taken the spinner and it played hard to get, making use of the strong flowing water too by holding itself side on in the flow. After it made a few leaps from the river, the fish soon tired and I had it close enough to slip the net under it.

The next couple of casts and drifts with the Bug spinner resulted in one hooked and lost trout, plus one hit and miss. I made a change of lure and gave the #1Aglia Fluo Micropigments brown a short workout, but due to it not attracting the attention of a trout I went back to the March Brown Bug as I moved a few metres upstream into the faster flowing waters.

That twenty-metre stretch of river was actually at a reasonably good wading height. There was only one problem, it didn't have any trout in it. With deeper water ahead, this is when I had to do a bit of bush bashing before I could give the Bug spinner a good workout in what I felt was some very good trout water. The whole side of the river that I was fishing from was fully lined with shrubs and flood debris. Not only that, but the riverbank was also well above the water so there was no margin for error. One slip and I was in for a good dunking.

I had no choice but to fish from the side of the river that I was on anyway, because the opposite side of the river was on private property. In addition to this, there was a large natural rock face along that side of the river. The good thing was that it didn't take all that long before I was onto another rainbow trout and it, like the last one, did all that it could to toss the Bug spinner. It didn't, and it wasn't long before it was in the net. This fish was around the same size as the last one. The main problem that I was having, and would continue to have, was reaching down from the riverbank to net the fish.

After releasing the trout, I moved a little further along the riverbank. A couple of times the riverbank broke away and I nearly went with it, which would have not been ideal with the water being deep and fast flowing. So, I just had to take things a little slower. Anyway, I found a nice small and open area that had enough room for me to flick the Bug spinner around to most areas on the river, which was good.

The first cast and retrieve, straight up the river, was all that it took before it was fish on. This time it was a medium size brown trout that fell to the March Brown coloured Bug spinner. The water here was flowing much faster, and I remembered that it was this same stretch of river that gave up some decent trout last season. The next cast was back into the same area and no sooner had the Bug hit the water, it was smashed by a solid fish. At first, I wasn't sure if it was a brown or rainbow trout. This fish stayed deep and pulled hard, so I guessed it was a rainbow trout. It wasn't until it broke the surface that I saw that it was indeed a nice solid rainbow. I love catching rainbow trout because it doesn't matter what size they are, they all fight so hard, much harder than the browns do.

The only difference is the rainbows become tired faster than the browns do, so most times the browns take longer to land than the rainbows. To make matters worse, there was the large fallen tree that was in the river, and keeping the trout away from it was near impossible. Thankfully I did manage to keep it away from the tree, only just though. What seemed like several minutes, but it was only a minute and a half, before I finally eased the fish into the net. Even getting it into the net wasn't all that easy because of the high riverbank. I had to reach down with the net before I could slip the trout into it. The rainbow was a beautifully coloured fish too and it weighed in at a good 385g.

Two trout in two casts in the same area rarely happens, but today it did, and it went one better because the next trout that I caught was from that same area as well. This time it was a well-conditioned brown that fell to the March Brown Bug. It, like the rainbow, fought hard and once again I had to keep it away from the fallen tree in the river, which I did, and like the rainbow it made it into the net. Three trout in five minutes is as good as it gets, however that was the last of the trout that was caught there, so it was onto the next available spot to fish from.

A little further up I found a small opening that I could fish from, and it was there that I caught another medium size brown, before I moved on. The next area that I came to was a little more open. The only problem I had with it was that I had to balance myself on a fallen tree and fish from it. One slip here and I was going to get very wet, so care had to be taken. It turned out to be a good option though because I managed to catch a nice medium sized rainbow, before moving onto some nice open area where I could actually hop into the river and make my way across.

From there I caught another two trout, one being a decent sized 555g brown trout and the other was a smaller brown. I had reached the top end of the two hundred metre stretch of water, so it was time to make my way out of this area and head to more open water further upstream. By the time I reached that open water it was 3:55 pm and a cold wind had picked up from the southeast, so I decided to call it a day.

Once across the river, I came to a wide backwater and spotted a trout surface feeding a few metres ahead of me, so I flicked the March Brown ahead of it. Not expecting much to happen on the retrieve, seeing as the water was very shallow, to my surprise that little trout took the spinner. That's when I called it a day. I still had a long twenty-minute walk back to the car from where I was. On the way back to the car I did try one more small, fast water run, but there wasn't a trout to be had in it. The spin session was a good one with six browns and four rainbows caught and released. As tough as it was, fishing that area was well worth the effort.

Adrian (meppstas)

Equipment Used Today:

Okuma Celilo Finesse Spin Rods – CE-S-662UL-1, 6’6”, 2-6lb
Okuma ITX Carbon Spin Reels – ITX-1000
Okuma Epixor XT Spin Reels - EXPT-20
Okuma Ceymar HD Spin Reels – CHD-1000HA
Platypus Pulse Mono
Platypus Stealth FC Fluorocarbon Leader
Mepps Inline Spinners