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Chasing Trout in Low Tannin Water
By Adrian (meppstas) Webb
Conditions were warm and humid, with light rain due overnight and heavy rain tomorrow, so I thought I would take the trout gear and check out one of the tannin streams that I like to chase trout in. I wasn't sure what the water levels would be like, seeing as it's been quite dry here for a week and a half. It doesn't take long for these small streams to drop to very low water levels.
When I arrived, I could see straight away that the water level was low but still good enough to hop in and see if I could catch a few trout. I started the session off using a Mepps #00 March Brown coloured Bug spinner and had a soft hit and miss on the first cast and retrieve. This cast was into a wide, forty-centimetre-deep stretch of dark tannin coloured water.
With the water being low in most stretches ahead of me, the slightest noise from my wading boots on the gravelly river bottom was enough to see trout darting off some fifteen metres ahead of me. I knew it was going to be a tough afternoon chasing trout, so I really had a challenge ahead of me. That's not a bad thing either. When one does catch trout in these tough conditions, you know you've done well to outsmart a very cunning fish.
The March Brown coloured Bug did draw the attention of a couple of small trout and that's as far as it went with them. I tried a gold #00 Mepps Aglia and that didn't attract any trout, so I went for a small, fifty-year-old spinner, that I had in my lure box. This was one that I had painted all those years ago. I painted the spinner blade with a light brown paint and once dry I added a few yellow dots on the blade.
This little spinner was a little heavier than the Mepps #00 (1.5 gram) spinner, but not by much at all as it only weighs 2.0 grams. Several metres ahead of me I noticed a trout surface feeding, so I cast the lure a couple of metres ahead of it and on the retrieve the spinner was picked off by a nice medium size brown and it stayed on. After half an hour in this tannin stream, at last I had my first trout hooked and landed.
From here on it went back to how it was earlier, with more shallow water and trout darting off ahead of me. I felt that it was time to go back to a Mepps spinner, so this time I went for a very well-used copper #00 Mepps Aglia Mouche Noire. Twenty-minutes on and I finally had a small brown take the spinner. This fish made one short run and then leaped from the river and out popped the lure.
I went to run my small sharpening stone over the treble hook and that's when I found one of the three hooks was missing. It had broken off when the trout leaped from the river. I didn't change the lure, instead all that I did was flatten the trebles out with small pliers so that they were facing away from each other.
Two casts and retrieves, in the next shallow stretch of water, was enough to get another small brown to take the spinner and it stayed on. I had my second fish of the day landed. A few minutes on and a little further upstream I caught my third trout in a very shallow narrow run of water. That fish was a tiddler. The two-hook system was doing a great job so far.
After that it went a little downhill again, as I lost a couple of trout in a row, so I removed one of the two hooks and continued to use the spinner with a single hook. There was one problem that I came across the further upstream I went, logjams! There have been quite a few of them here, since my last visit a couple of months ago. To get where I was at this stage, I had already climbed over two of them. The third one that I came across was the biggest one so far and it took its toll on me by the time I had made my way over it.
Once over it, there was another one four metres ahead of me that I had to climb over. Once over that one I was pleased to see there was some nice water to be fished. I had a solid hit from a trout, in a waist deep short run of water on a sharp bend in the stream and then around the bend was a shallow run and that's where I caught my fourth trout of the spin session.
Once released, I checked my watch to see how much time had passed since the third trout was caught. It was thirty-five minutes. The humidity was very high by now and I was hot, bothered and ready to call it a day. At some stage I then decided to fish a little longer, to see if I could pick up a few more trout. The good thing was that I had a clear run, without any logjams for quite some time. Here I managed to catch a couple of small brown trout and lost a couple as well.
As I made my way around a lefthand bend in the river, I came across another log jam. This one wasn't all that bad to get across, however as before, once across it there was another logjam several metres further upstream. That log jam was much larger than previous jams, however I did climb over it and once over it I was totally done and dusted.
Ahead of me was a couple of short and deep runs. At the top end of them was another large log jam, which I knew I just could not push myself to climb over. That's when I called it a day. From here I then had to find my way out. I couldn't head back downstream because it meant climbing back over log jams again. I knew that I could get to open land by getting out of the righthand side of the stream, however getting through the thick scrub that was full of blackberry bushes, prickly thorn bushes, tea trees and what I call razor grass, was going to be very tough.
I found a small opening, that looked like a track made by wallabies, so that was where I started. Once I started to make my way out it wasn't as easy as I first thought it would be. A wallaby is smaller in height than me, so they managed to get under most of the bushes. I was halfway into it now and I could see the open grassland from where I was standing. I had no choice but to tough it out.
Five minutes later I reached the open grassland and all that I had now was a kilometre walk back to the car. By the time I reached the car I was totally exhausted. At the end of the day, it wasn't all that bad. I had caught six trout and lost several others, in what was a very challenging spin session and that's what trout fishing is all about in my book.
Adrian (meppstas)
Equipment Used During My Trout Season:
Okuma Celilo Finesse Spin Rods - ULS 1-3kg
Okuma LRF Spin Rods – 1-3kg
Okuma ITX Carbon Spin Reels – ITX-1000
Okuma Inspira Blue Spin Reels - ISX-20B
Okuma Helios SX Spin Reels - HSX-20
Okuma Epixor XT Spin Reels - EXPT-20
Okuma Ceymar Spin Reels - C-10
Platypus Pulse Mono Premium Monofilament – 4lb
Platypus Super 100 Monofilament – 4lb
Platypus Pre-test Monofilament – 4lb
Platypus Stealth FC Fluorocarbon Leader
Mepps Inline Spinners
Mepps Bug Inline Spinner
Mepps Aglia Mouch Noire Inline Spinner