Tackle Tactics » Tips-Techniques » Adrian-Webbs-Trout-Tips » Trout in Foggy Conditions
Trout in Foggy Conditions
By Adrian (meppstas) Webb
More fine weather was forecast for today so I decided a trip to the upper Mersey River may be well worthwhile, and for a change I was on my way by 6:30 am. The morning was pretty cool, with the air temperature sitting at a cold 1.5 degrees and it was also a foggy morning. By the time I arrived, parked the car, and then made my way through the pea soup fog to the river, it was 7:40 am by the time I was in the water and my hands were numb from the cold. It was quite nice being in the river on a calm foggy morning. A little eerie, but at the same time very peaceful and certainly different to most starts I have had so far this trout season.
Today, the lure of choice was one of the latest of a new line of inline spinners that has just been released by Tackle Tactics, the lure was a #1 TT Spintrix inline spinner in Redfin Perch colour. With the foggy conditions I felt the light-coloured blade spinner may be the best choice to start the spin session. If it didn't get things going, then I would select something else and work through spinners until I found one that would catch a trout or two.
After a few casts and retrieves, it wasn't all that long after casting and drifting the spinner that I hooked and lost a small trout. Then, after a cast directly up the river, I hooked and landed (7:55 am) the first trout of the morning. Nothing big, just a nice well-conditioned, medium size brown trout. It was a good start with the new Redfin Perch inline spinner.
Ten minutes later, and a few metres further upstream. while casting and drifting the Redfin Perch spinner, I picked up a small rainbow trout. Two trout in reasonably quick time was just the start I was hoping for. The thick fog was starting to thin out as the sun rose higher and I knew that it wouldn't be too much longer before the fog would be gone, and the river would be in full sun. This would make for some interesting fishing. Full sun on crystal clear water could make for a change of lure and I may have to go for a darker coloured blade spinner such as a Spintrix Gold or Orange Cicada, Black Red Dots, or the Black Yellow Dots. Any of those spinners may be given a workout before the end of the spin session if the sun was shining bright on the clear water.
The fog was starting to thin out as I slowly made my way upstream, casting and drifting the lure I hooked and lost a small trout in a fast water run. Then, several minutes later, I hooked and landed a small trout. Once released I continued to make my way upstream and had a few soft hits and misses. The trout didn't seem to be as aggressive the lighter the day it became. Bring back the fog, was what I thought to myself a few times, before I finally caught a small brown trout.
From then on, the fog had lifted, the sun was on the water and the trout were few and far between. To make matters worse I hooked and lost two reasonably nice, medium size trout. Then, while fishing a narrow fast water run, I caught and released two more small browns in quick time. This was good, but I was a little sorry that they weren't bigger fish. It was a good twenty minutes or so before I caught the next trout and this one was a well-conditioned, medium size fish, that I lured out of a narrow pocket of water that ran next to a large log on the riverbank.
With some nice water ahead of me I felt confident that there was more to come. I was sure that I would catch a few more fish before I was ready to call it a day. It didn't turn out as I had hoped it would and the trout were nowhere to be seen. It wasn't until I came to another run, that had a lot of debris next to it, that I caught the trout of the day. It was on the first cast too, which was even better. No sooner had the spinner hit the water and it was hit hard and fast by a beautiful solid brown trout. This fish made several hard runs and leaps from the river, and I had my heart in my mouth each time it thrashed around on the surface in the shallow water.
In the end I had to stop filming and get the fish into the net as soon as possible. If I lost it while filming, like I have done so many times over the years, I wouldn’t be all that happy with myself. Once the camera was tucked in the waders, I concentrated on landing the trout, which I did manage to do a short time later. It was certainly a beautifully coloured fish. which made the catch that much better. I weighed the fish while it was in the net, then deducted the 310 grams of net weight, and the trout ended up being 665 grams total weight.
From here on (10:05 am) it was all downhill. The sun was well and truly on the open water, a north easterly wind had arrived, and the trout shut down. Even though I knew I was wasting my time, I fished on for another hour, with just the one trout seen in the river. That's when I called it a day and made the fifteen-minute walk back to the car. The last fifty metres of the walk was the toughest because it was all uphill to where the car was parked, and I was totally ‘you know what’ by the time I reached the car.
In the end it was still a reasonably good spin session, with six browns and one rainbow being caught and released. The new TT Spintrix inline spinner in Redfin Perch colour did its job, which I was happy with. On the next trip to a large river, I'll try another Spintrix model or two and see how they perform on the trout. I'm sure they will do the job.
Adrian (meppstas)
Equipment Used Today
TT Red Belly Spin Rod - RBS702L, 7’, 1-3kg
Okuma ITX Carbon Spin Reel – ITX-1000
Platypus Pulse Premium Mono
Platypus Stealth FC Fluorocarbon Leader
TT Spintrix Inline Spinners