Tackle Tactics » Tips-Techniques » Adrian-Webbs-Trout-Tips » Double Digits on the Aglia Brown
Double Digits on the Aglia Brown
By Adrian (meppstas) Webb
Another day that was cool and a little windy saw me heading off for a short spin session in another small stream. I was hoping to get onto a few more brown trout before the end of the month. Still recovering from the flu, I didn't travel all that far from home and fished a five hundred metre stretch of water on a friend's property. The water level was a little on the high side and with this little stream being quite narrow with high riverbanks, the water was running quite hard and fast.
I used the same equipment that I used two days ago, while fishing another small stream, the only difference today was that I started the spin session off using the Mepps #1 Aglia Fluo Micropigments brown inline spinner, rather than switching to it halfway into the session like I did on the last trip. Today it was going to be quite easy to pick the areas where to cast and retrieve the spinner. With the water running hard and fast, all I had to do was to cast the Aglia brown into the narrow flatwater areas on either side of the stream. If the trout were in the area, that's where they would be, holding out of the fast-flowing water, ready to pounce on anything that came their way.
I wasn't expecting that much would happen on the first cast (at 1:05 pm) into a narrow flatwater on the right-hand side just ahead of me, however no sooner had the spinner hit the water and it was snapped up by a small brown trout. I couldn't believe my luck, a hookup on the first cast and retrieve of the afternoon. That's something that rarely happens to me. It didn't take long before I had that little trout in the net, photographed and back in the stream for another day.
That was a great way to start off the afternoon spin session, but I doubted that it would continue as good as it started. A little further upstream, and five minutes later, I caught another small brown after flicking the spinner into a small flatwater next to the riverbank. This time it was on the left-hand side of the stream. That trout was a little bigger too, which was good to see. Not that I was expecting any large trout to be caught in this little stream as it mainly holds small/medium sized trout. Every so often I catch the odd larger (600-700g) size trout in this little stream but that's not often.
Two trout caught and released in the first five minutes was as good a start as anyone could expect... but would it continue like this? It did go a little quiet for the next ten minutes, however that's when I picked up (1:25 pm) trout number three. Like the last trout, this fish was lured from a small flatwater on the left-hand side of the stream. The good thing was that this was the biggest fish of the three.
After its release things did slow down a little, which was mainly caused by the stretches of river that I fished running too fast, shallow, and with very little flatwater on either side of the stream. It wasn't until 1:58 pm that I caught my next trout and it was caught after casting the Aglia Fluo into a deeper run of water downstream, that I had to bypass due to it being too deep to wade. Plus, it had very high riverbanks on each side as well. That trout was the smallest trout caught so far, but like I say, they all add up at the end of the day don't they.
After bypassing a long, wide, and shallow stretch of water, I moved back into the narrow, deeper, fast-flowing water that had a few nice flatwater areas on the right-hand side. These areas have given up trout on previous trips here during the last trout season. Today was no exception and that right-hand side of the river did it again, with two trout landed in two casts and retrieves. It doesn't get any better than that. I was feeling a lot happier now, with half a dozen trout caught and released in the first hour. With some nice water ahead of me, I had a good chance of reaching double digits today.
I felt that things did get away from me there for a while, when I hooked and lost a small trout, mainly because once I lost that little fish, I didn't have any more strikes for close to thirty minutes. That's when it all turned around again, and I finally hooked and landed another trout. From then on everything went to plan and, even though the trout were several minutes apart, I did go on to finish the spin session with eleven trout being caught and released.
As much as I would have liked to fish on for a little longer, the wind had increased, and it had become a lot colder as the wind picked up. Still, not being completely over the flu, I felt it was time to head back to the car. In the end, I had achieved more than I thought I would have done when I left home. Eleven trout was a great result, plus it was my first double figure spin session in the first month of the newly opened trout season. The Mepps Aglia Fluo Micropigments brown inline spinner was certainly looking a little worse for wear now. It caught a lot of trout during the 2022/23 trout season and another fourteen in my last two trips for this season. The best trout weighed 385g and as always, the Okuma ITX-1000 spinning reel, combined with the Okuma Celilo Finesse Spin 6' rod did the job, spooled with ultra-thin 4lb Platypus Pulse Ghost Clear monofilament line.
Adrian (meppstas)
Equipment Used Today:
Okuma Celilo Finesse Spin Rod - CE-S-602UL-1 6’ Ultra-Light 2-6lb
Okuma ITX Carbon Spin Reel - ITX-1000
Platypus Pulse Mono – 4lb Premium Nylon Monofilament Line
Platypus Stealth FC Fluorocarbon Leader
Mepps Aglia Fluo Micropigments Inline Spinners