Tackle Tactics » Tips-Techniques » Adrian-Webbs-Trout-Tips » One Trout Short
One Trout Short
The weather was fine and sunny today, however the wind was still blowing at 25-35kph with gusts up to 55kph at times... making me wonder if I should stay home or go and tough it out in the same small stream that I had fished the day before. I decided to do the latter and headed off to fish the stream, starting from where I had called it a day yesterday. After all, there was still some good trout water to be fished.
I was in the river by 2:10pm and boy the wind was roaring like hell. The good thing was that I did have plenty of wind breaks, thanks to the thick tea trees that lined both sides of the stream. Actually, I was lucky in one way too, I entered the river approximately one hundred metres upstream from where I finished fishing yesterday. The reason I'm saying I was lucky is that I had only been in the river a few minutes when I heard a loud crack that sounded like lightning. It wasn't lightning at all though, it was a large gum tree breaking, before it came crashing down across the river, close to where I would have been had I not stopped short to enter the river. The fishing gods or my dear mum and dad were looking down on me for sure.
Back to the fishing. Only needing thirteen trout to hit the 500 trout for the season, I was feeling pretty confident of doing it this trip. The spin session started off very well, catching two browns on the Aglia gold in the first couple of stretches of water. They were small browns like the previous day. After that I went quiet for around thirty minutes, as I fished my way up the narrow little stream.
Once the wind started to ease off, the fish seemed to come on the take again the further I fished my way up the river. I was hooking a trout on a regular basis now and it was looking like I was going to crack the 500 trout in no time at all... then it all changed and the trout became non aggressive. I really had to work the Aglia spinner to coax them into taking it in the tannin water. I was casting the spinner upstream, lobbing it close to the banks and then retrieving it directly back down the stream, while at the same time giving the rod a light twitch to get the trout to strike the spinner. I had several hits but no hook ups and it looked like trout number 500 wasn't going to come easy today... I was going to earn it.
It took a while before a decent brown took the gold Aglia, a nice solid fish that went 525 grams and was in top condition. It was trout number ten for the spin session. With just the three trout required I was on a high and also feeling more confident that I would now reach the number required. The eleventh trout was taken soon after the release of the 525 gram brown and things were looking very good.
Well, that's when it happened, the trout shut down again and all I had was a few light hit and misses on the spinner. The trout's aggression was gone again and they were just tapping at the lure and it didn't matter what I tried... they just wouldn't take it. I stuck with the gold Aglia, as I still had faith in the little lure and twenty minutes later I had number twelve hooked and landed.
With just one trout required and only a couple more stretches of water left to fish, before I called it a day, I was still confident of catching one more trout. I was then into the last water to be fished and this was my last chance to catch that trout. I had several casts into what was a nice wide, shallow stretch of water that really looked fishy. I missed the one and only chance from a trout that hit the spinner hard. Yes... I missed hooking it... my chance went begging and I hopped out of the stream feeling pretty disappointed that I blew it.
I could have fished on but decided not to push my sore body any longer, thinking I'll leave it for another day. On the walk back to the car I did think of what could and should have been on the day. The water level had dropped by a couple of inches from the day before and that probably had a bit to do with the trout coming and going too. It doesn't take much to turn them on or off at the best of times. With twenty days of the brown trout season left I knew I'd get the 500th trout on the next trip anyway... I was only a day or so away before it and several others would be in the net.
Equipment used:
Okuma Celilo 6' ULS 1-3 kg trout rod
Okuma Helios HSX-20 spin reel
Platypus Super 100 clear 4lb Ultra High Tenacity Monofilament line
Mepps Aglia inline spinners