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Tassie Trout for Gavin
By Adrian (meppstas) Webb
Today I took a friend from South Australia to the Mersey River for a spin session. Gavin and his wife have been travelling around Tasmania for a couple of weeks, today was their last day here and he really wanted to catch a trout in a river before he left Tasmania. I picked Gavin up from the motel at 8:00 am and it was around 9:00 am by the time we arrived, got into the wading gear and then made our way down to the river, where we crossed over and headed downstream to where we started the spin session.
I gave Gavin a mix of #1 Mepps inline spinners to use and said that the Aglia Fluo Micropigments rainbow spinner would be a good lure to start with. The first stretch of water that we fished was a nice wide, deep run of medium to fast flowing water. I was standing a few feet from to Gavin when he had his first cast and retrieve into the Mersey River, and it was his second cast that put a smile on his face when he hooked a solid rainbow trout. That rainbow pulled hard and made several runs before he had it in close enough to ease it into the landing net. Gavin had landed his first Tasmanian wild rainbow trout, a fish that was in the 370g range and in top condition.
I felt it was now time for me to move to my starting point and start casting and retrieving the Mepps #1 Aglia Fluo Micropigments brown spinner to see if I could get the same result as Gavin did. I did catch a solid rainbow as well, however mine took a few more casts and retrieves before I hooked onto it. That rainbow was around the same size as the one Gavin caught and like his fish, it was in top condition. Not long after the release of that rainbow the wind arrived, and it was a very strong, gusty wind at that. It was blowing close to 25 kph most of the time and to make matters worse it was coming straight down the river.
The fishing itself was slow going as well and it wasn't until we had covered quite a lot of distance upstream that I hooked and landed my second rainbow trout of the morning, forty minutes on from when I landed my first trout. The wind was driving both of us crazy, and to make matters worse it was also a cold South Westerly. While I continued to fish the wide open shallow fast waters, Gavin moved into a nice narrow knee-deep side water, that was a little sheltered from the wind.
While fishing the shallow fast water I changed lures. I decided to go with the Mepps March Brown coloured Bug, to see if that would draw the attention of a trout or two. It wasn't all that long before I hooked and lost a small brown. Not all that long after that I hooked and landed a 315g brown trout, while drifting the spinner with the flow. Casting the lure directly upstream was near impossible with the wind now blowing straight down the river and stronger than ever.
I continued to cast and drift the spinner in the shallow fast water for another twenty minutes, until I reached the slower flowing waters. During that time, I had caught and released another small trout from two hookups. Gavin had made it to the end of the small side water as well and he had a couple of trout follow the Aglia rainbow, however both showed no signs of aggression towards the lure.
The river was now in full sun, which wasn't making the fishing any better in the crystal-clear water. We did see a few trout follow our lures for a short distance, while fishing the wide-open waters, but that's as far as it went with them. It wasn't until I had reached another shallow fast water stretch that I hooked and lost two more small brown trout. That's when we both decided to call it a day.
It was 12:45 pm by the time we made it back to the car. I wanted to make sure that I had Gavin back to Sheffield so that he could meet up with his wife as they had to be at Devonport by three o'clock to check in for the trip back to the mainland on the Spirit of Tasmania. The spin session wasn't as good as I thought it would have been, which was a shame as I would have liked Gavin to have caught more than the one rainbow trout. This area normally fishes well, with catches of seven to fifteen trout per spin session, but for some reason today the trout were not all that aggressive. I have a feeling that it's had quite a lot of traffic on it over the past few weeks, which may have been the reason why the trout were non-aggressive and few and far between. Then again, it may have just been one of those days too. The highlight of the day for me was seeing Gavin catch his first Tasmanian wild rainbow trout, and that was a plus.
Adrian (meppstas)
Equipment Used During my Trout Season
TT Red Belly Spin Rod - RBS702L 7’0”, 1-3kg
Okuma Celilo Finesse Spin Rod – CE-S-602UL-1 6’0”, 2-6lb
Okuma Celilo Finesse Spin Rod – CE-S-662UL-1 6’6”, 2-6lb
Okuma ITX Carbon Spin Reels – ITX-1000
Epixor XT Spin Reels - EXPT-20
Okuma Ceymar HD Spin Reels – CHD-1000HA
Platypus Pulse Mono Fishing Line
Platypus Super 100 Mono Fishing Line
Platypus Pre-Test Mono Fishing Line
Platypus Stealth FC Fluorocarbon Leader
Mepps Inline Spinners
TT Spintrix Inline Spinners