Tackle Tactics » Tips-Techniques » Adrian-Webbs-Trout-Tips » Great Spin Session 30-11-2018
Great Spin Session 30-11-2018
On this adventure I headed off around 8:00am for a spin session in the river, only to find the river was running a little on the high side and it wasn't safe enough for me to cross over. That's what I get for not checking the river levels before I left home. I decided to head on up to the upper reaches of it, where I knew it was safe enough to hop in and wade.
This is when it's handy knowing the rivers I fish, so that after so many years of fishing in them, one gets to know them like the back of your hand. I headed to one of my favourite areas, only to find someone else already in the river fishing, which meant I had to fish elsewhere. I decided on fishing another long wide stretch of river that didn't fish all that well last season when I fished it.
The river here was running at medium height and just like the sky it was on the cloudy side and a dark tannin colour, which was good to see. These conditions can be quite good and with lower visibility in the water they will often grab whatever goes near them. That's when the Mepps blade spinner excels over hard body lures because of the solid vibration that's sent out, as the metal blade rotates as the lure is retrieved through the water.
This is where the Aglia lure works at its best as it has a larger blade and a wider rotation, so it's the perfect lure for these conditions. A strong Northerly was forecast for later in the day so I had to hurry up and get my act together.
With the water being the way it was, I kicked the session off with the Mepps #1 Aglia Furia and things were a little slow at the start. I hooked and lost the first two trout, which didn't impress me, then it all started to fall into place as I started getting quite a few hook ups and they were all making it to the net. Some were small brown trout and others were in the medium size range.
With it being such a dull, overcast morning, the wide slow flowing water was producing a few trout as well. Had it been in full sun it may have been a lot different though. It was the fast water stretches that gave up the majority of the fish.
The cast and drift method worked a treat today in the fast water because they were nice wide runs and I had plenty of area to work using that method of fishing. It was nice to finally catch some larger trout too and even better I managed to catch and release four nice rainbow trout, with two of them going over the 400g mark.
I did have one beautiful rainbow trout in the 500g plus range give me merry hell, before it straightened the treble causing me to lose it (the fish that is). A few times I was going to call it a day and then I would hook and land a trout and that kept me moving onto the next stretch of fast water. In the end I became too sore in the body and thought it best to end the session.
I finally called it a day at 1.40pm, when the northerly hit and started howling straight down the river at around 30kph. Today was one of my best spin sessions of the trout season by far, with 18 brown trout and 4 rainbow trout being caught and released from 28 hook ups. It was a session I was not expecting to happen either. I was quite happy after I had caught six trout early on and wasn't expecting to catch many more.
I did have to put on a new Aglia Furia, after breaking the treble hook and that was the only downfall on the day. The new Okuma 6'6'' LRF 1-3 kg trout rod did its job really well too. It's a nice, light, well balanced rod. I would like to have caught two more trout as that would have put me on two hundred for the season. I'm still well down for the same time last season, when I was on 309 trout. Actually it was on the 30th November last season that I fished the upper reaches of this river for 27 brown trout and 1 rainbow trout. Anyway, it was still a great spin session today and a good decision to head up there.