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Rainbows Run Hot
By Adrian (meppstas) Webb
The conditions for trout fishing were pretty good this morning; dull overcast weather, which I love to fish in, so I headed off to the Meander River for a spin session. As I was on my way, driving through Kimberley, I had to cross the Mersey River and when I saw the height of it, I decided to take the road to Weegena and fish the upper Mersey River, instead of making the longer drive to Meander.
Once there, I couldn't believe how low the water level was. Not that I minded because it was going to make it a lot easier to fish, as the width of the river was much narrower. The river itself had changed too. The massive flood that we had a couple of months before the new year had certainly cleared a lot of debris out of it.
I started the session off using a Mepps #1 Aglia Fluo Micropigments Brown inline spinner, in a stretch of water close to the bridge. This is a stretch of water that's always given up a couple of trout each time I've fished it. Well, today it didn't give a yelp. Not a sign of a trout was had here, which was a bit of a letdown. With very little breeze on the water, I could see there were trout surface feeding in the slow flowing flat waters, so I felt the faster flowing runs would be the best to fish today.
As I made my way upstream, I still tried several different Mepps spinners (March Brown and Stone Fly Bug, Aglia Fluo Micropigments Rainbow and Aglia Furia) in the slow flowing flat waters. They did attract the attention of several non-aggressive trout and that's as far as it went. It wasn't until I had moved into the first fast water run that I picked up a small rainbow trout, while using the #1 Mepps Aglia Furia spinner. Finally, after forty minutes of being in the river, I had the first trout of the day in the net.
That was the only trout that I caught for quite some time, as I fished a long and slow flowing stretch of water, before reaching some good fast water runs. The trout were in that slow flowing stretch and like the previous slow water run there were no signs of aggression from them. Once I reached the faster waters, that's when the trout fishing turned around. I caught and released three more rainbow trout in fifteen minutes, all taken on the Aglia Furia.
The river here was great for casting and drifting the Aglia Furia and several times the lure was taken as soon as it hit the water. From here on I was catching rainbow trout every few minutes. I couldn't believe how quick the fishing had turned around in my favour. I think I had ten small to medium size rainbows caught and released before I finally caught a small brown trout.
During that time a gusty, cold Easterly breeze had arrived, making the fishing a little uncomfortable. The good thing was that it didn't shut them down. The fishing did slow down to what it had been, however I did go on to catch another four rainbow trout and two browns, plus I hooked and lost a few more fish as well. One of those rainbow trout was also the fish of the day, weighing 510 grams and it was in top condition too.
Once I reached the end of the fast waters, at 12:05pm, that's when I called it a day. From here I had a twenty-minute walk back to the car. Not only that, the river ahead of me was also wide and deep, so it wasn't worth going any further. This is only the second time that I had caught a double figure catch of rainbow trout in a river, and more rainbow trout than brown trout as well. At one stage I felt that I had made a bad decision heading here, that was until I caught that run of trout in the second long stretch of fast water. That was an hour and ten minutes after catching the first trout of the day.
Thankfully, that second stretch of fast water fished as good as it could, and it turned out to be a top day in the river. In fact, it was my best spin session in the Mersey River so far this season. As always, I was impressed with the 7', 1-3kg TT Red Belly spin rod, and it's a nice well-balanced combo paired with the Okuma ITX-1000 reel to top it off. The 4lb Platypus Super 100 Brown mono line held up very well too, as it always does. Even better, on the day I didn't have to make a change of lure once the trout took a liking to the Mepps Aglia Furia. Every trout caught today was on that inline spinner.
Adrian (meppstas)
Equipment Used During My Trout Season
TT Red Belly Spin Rods - RBS702L 7’ 1-3kg 2pce
Okuma Celilo Finesse Spin Rods – 6’6” 1-3kg 2pce
Okuma ITX Carbon Spin Reels – ITX-1000
Okuma Epixor XT Spin Reels - EXPT-20
Okuma Ceymar HD Spin Reels – CHD-1000HA
Platypus Pulse Mono
Platypus Super 100 Mono
Platypus Pre-Test Mono
Platypus Stealth FC Fluorocarbon Leader
Mepps Inline Spinners