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Fast Water Fishing for Trout 200
By Adrian (meppstas) Webb
Now in the middle of a cold Tassie winter and trout closed season, Adrian (meppstas) reflects on a productive December fast water spin session.
With mainly fine weather forecast again today, I headed off to the Meander River for another spin session. With the river level being raised to 68cm for irrigation purposes, I went straight to the slower flowing waters. Today I was in the river by 7:30am, which has been one of my earliest starts for quite some time… in fact I reckon it was my earliest for this season.
It wasn't until I hopped in the river that I realised I had grabbed one of my short 6' Okuma Celilo Finesse small stream trout set ups, instead of the longer 6'6'' Okuma Celilo Finesse set up. Not that it mattered all that much as the little Okuma ITX-1000 spinning reel would still do the job and get the casting distance with ease. There was one thing that I didn't like, once I was in the river, and that was the condition of the rocky river bottom. It was covered in a brown type of algae as well as the green cotton like algae. To make matters worse, the green algae was breaking up and drifting with the flow of the water, which meant whatever lure I used would become fouled up on a regular basis. This did happen from the very first cast and retrieval, with the Mepps #0 Stone Fly coloured Mepps Bug spinner becoming fouled continually as I fished my way upstream in slow/medium flowing water.
As I approached a fast water run, and after not seeing trout in the slow/medium waters, I changed the Stone Fly for a #0 March Brown coloured Bug spinner. I did think about getting out and driving to the fast waters a few kilometres further up the river, however I decided to give it another ten minutes here. It was a good decision, with two casts and retrieves being all that it took before it was fish on. A beautiful, well-conditioned brown took the March Brown spinner and after a brief battle it was in the net. Following its release I gave the fishing here another five minutes, before becoming sick and tired of the green algae continually fouling the spinner. It was time to head to the fast waters.
Even though the river level was higher than I liked, I knew that the fast waters would likely be pretty algae free. Plus, I'd have a better chance of catching more trout there. It was 8:35am when I was back in the river and to my surprise it was a little slippery under foot. Even with the spiked felt sole wading boots I had to take it slow and easy. The water level, being several inches higher than I liked, didn't help either as it meant that there was more water pressure on the legs, making it that much tougher going. Also, there wasn’t as many pockets of flat water available on either side of the river, with it running higher and faster, which can make the trout a little harder to find.
As always, the water was still great for casting and drifting the inline spinners. It didn't take all that long before I picked up my first trout here, on the Stone Fly Bug spinner, a small brown that snapped up the lure as it drifted past a small flat water, behind a boulder in the middle of the river. My next cast and retrieve, into a narrow flat water directly ahead of me, resulted in a hooked and lost small brown trout. Five minutes later I had another small trout take the spinner on the drift and this was a much better start than I had anticipated. Then it went quiet for quite some time. It was thirty-five minutes after the second trout was released when I finally hooked and landed my third small trout of the session. Before that, I was seriously thinking about getting out and heading off to the Mersey River. I'm glad that I didn't.
From here on the trout fishing picked up, as did the size of many of the trout. Even though there were several small trout being caught, the rest were all solid well-conditioned browns. I did have to up the size of my March Brown Bug spinner, from a #0 (2.5g) to a #1 (3.5g) due to the water flowing faster here than where I first started fishing. The river here flows much faster the further up one gets because of the steeper gradient and wading my way upstream gets much tougher too.
In the end it was well worth doing the hard yards for another couple of hours because I ended up catching and releasing another eleven trout, with the best one weighing 510 grams. Better still, I caught my two hundredth trout of the season. This was something that I didn't think I would do before the end of the year, given how slow the fishing had been early in the first few months of the season. As I always do, I did push on a little longer than I had intended to do today, in the higher river level. As sore as my body was it was well worth it, with a total of sixteen trout caught and released.
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