Tackle Tactics » Tips-Techniques » Adrian-Webbs-Trout-Tips » Small Stream Surprise
Small Stream Surprise
By Adrian (meppstas) Webb
Even though I was a little stiff and sore from the short spin session yesterday, as the morning went on, I felt better, so a late start was had in a small tannin stream. In what was pretty good weather, it was 11:50am when I finally hopped into the stream. The water level was good and the water itself was a nice, medium tannin colour, just ideal for trout fishing.
I started the spin session off with the same trout gear that I used yesterday, which was the Okuma Celilo Finesse Spin ULS 1-3kg trout rod, Okuma ITX-1000 spinning reel and the Mepps #0 March Brown coloured Bug inline spinner. Of course, the reel was spooled with the ever-reliable, ultra-strong 4lb Platypus Pulse Mono line. On the first few casts and retrieves not a lot happened, that was until I lobbed the spinner close to the righthand riverbank.
On the retrieve a dark object appeared behind the lure and followed it for a short distance, before it turned and moved off, not to be seen again. That dark object was a large trout, of a size that is rarely seen in such a small stream. Fish of that size are very few and far between. Yesterday the trout went for the March Brown Bug spinner late in the afternoon, in similar weather conditions, however the sun then was much lower.
Today, I was in the river three hours earlier and the sun was on the water surface, so a change of lure was in order. It was an easy choice in terms of what lure would replace the March Brown, it was the Stone Fly Bug colour that went on the small snap swivel. I felt that the black colour of the Stone Fly spinner was better suited to the brighter conditions for now. If it didn't attract trout, then I'd make another change.
I had only just made the lure change, when I noticed a trout breaking the surface near the left riverbank and a little further upstream. It was within easy casting distance but impossible to get to from where I was in the river, due to a couple of overhanging trees that blocked the cast. All I could do was slowly make my way upstream and tread as lightly as possible on the gravelly river bottom, so as not to spook the trout.
It only took a few minutes before I was in enough open water to make a cast into the area where I had seen the trout rise. All I was hoping was that the trout was still in the area and that hopefully I had made the right choice going with the Stone Fly Bug spinner. Seeing as I was standing half a metre off the left riverbank, I made sure the first cast was parallel to the side of the river where I was standing.
I lobbed the lure close on sixty centimetres off the riverbank and as I retrieved the spinner a bow wave appeared out of nowhere. The trout came hard and fast at the lure and in no time at all it was fish on! This was a nice solid fish too and one that fought hard and made several leaps from the river, before it finally tired and I eased it into the net. This was just the start I was hoping for, a trout caught in the first ten minutes was a good start and a decent 410g trout too. Even better was my choice of lure had worked. After a couple of photos, the trout was released back into the stream for me to catch another day.
The water ahead of me had a few reeds close to the riverbank on the righthand side, along with a small bubble line on the surface that was just over a metre from the riverbank. To me it was a good run of water that could have a trout in it and I didn't have to move from where I had just released the previous trout. There was a large tree next to the river, that was close to the reeds and the water was swirling around it. That's the area that I cast the lure into.
I was only halfway into retrieving the lure when it was taken by another trout. This fish felt bigger than the one I had just released. It pulled hard and stayed deep, then it made a run towards me and that's when I saw the size of it. It was a big fish, for such a small stream. It made a dash down past me, on my left side, before it turned and came back past me and headed back across the narrow stream. At one stage it turned me around in a half circle, when it ran from one side of the stream to the other. The Okuma Celilo ULS 1-3kg rod was well bent over, the little Okuma ITX-1000 reel was holding well, as was the thin 4lb Platypus Pulse Mono line. This trout wasn't going anywhere but in my landing net.
After what seemed like a couple of minutes, I finally had it in close enough to slip the net under. No sooner was it in the net and it gave an almighty roll and shot out of the net and back into the water. When that happened, my heart was in my mouth as I thought it may toss the lure. Thankfully it didn't and I managed to ease it back into the landing net. How it never tossed the lure, in the way that it played merry hell in the water and then leapt from the net and still stayed hooked, amazes me.
Once it settled down in the net, I attached my scales to the net and weighed it, then deducted the 310g net weight, which left the trout at a solid 785g. It's nowhere near the biggest trout that I've caught in a stream/river at all, however it was one of the best that I had caught in this small stream, by at least 200g. When I was taking a photograph of the fish, while it was in the net, I noticed it had a large indent right behind the dorsal fin which was strange. It didn't impact the way it fought for its freedom at all and like all the trout I've caught, it was released hopefully for another day.
Once I was over the adrenalin rush of catching that trout, I moved on and made my way upstream. I continued flicking the Stone Fly Bug around in some nice-looking water, but the trout were few and far between. I did hook and lose a couple of browns, before I went on to catch a trout every twenty-five minutes, before they completely shut down once I caught and released my fifth trout. I tried several different inline spinners and hooked and lost a couple of small trout, but it wasn't until I gave a Mepps #00 White Miller Bug spinner a go that I hooked the smallest trout of the session.
After its release, I didn't see another trout until I was about to get out of the water an hour later. That's when I caught the seventh trout of the spin session, which was caught on a March Brown coloured Mapps Bug spinner. My day was done. The trout had more-or-less shut down once the North Easterly breeze arrived. Not only that my body was getting a little sore, so it wasn't worth continuing any further. I was still happy with how the session went today, with some nice trout caught and released, including one of them being a PB for me in this small stream. I'll rest up tomorrow and depending on the weather, I'll be ready for another session in a day or two.
Equipment Used:
Okuma Celilo Finesse Spin Rods - ULS 1-3kg
Okuma ITX Carbon Spin Reels - ITX-1000
Platypus Pulse Mono Line – 4lb
Platypus Stealth FC Fluorocarbon Leader – 4lb
Mepps Inline Spinners
Mepps Bug Inline Spinner
Adrian (meppstas)