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Trout in Tranquil Waters
By Adrian (meppstas) Webb
After having a great spin session two days ago, I headed back to the same little tannin stream, this time heading to a stretch of water a lot further upstream. The water I fished today was one that I hadn't fished for quite some time, so I was hoping it may have been holding quite a lot of trout, like the lower runs had done.
The main difference with this water that I normally fish is that it is in a densely covered area. There are a lot of large trees and thick foliage along both sides of the stream. Not only that, once in it there's not all that many places where one can get out of the stream, due to it being so densely covered. Plus, there are a lot of blackberry bushes in there too.
The good thing about fishing this area is the peace and quiet that surrounds oneself. It's what I call tranquil waters. The only things that you hear are the sounds of the variety of bird life that live here, and at times the noise of water running over a fallen log in the stream. The conditions today were reasonably good, but there was more blue sky than cloud around, which meant there would be plenty of sun on the water. This made it a challenging time catching the trout.
The first run that I fished was a small, well-shaded, knee deep stretch of water, where I caught a small trout in the first five minutes while using the March Brown coloured Mepps Bug spinner. Catching that trout so early into the spin session gave me some hope that I may have been wrong about it being a tough day chasing the trout. However, I was still in the shaded water at this stage. I still had a nice long, one hundred metres of shaded water to fish and I thought I would, or should, pick up a few more trout, before I reached the sun-filled waters further upstream. That long stretch of shaded water didn't give up a trout. I tried the #00 White Miller Mepps Bug and #00 Copper Mepps Aglia Mouche Noire, before going back to the March Brown Bug. All I had was two hits and misses from small trout.
I had come to the end of the shaded water and was into the sun filled, partly shaded waters. This is where I had to make several lure changes to see what would be best suited to the trout in these conditions. I tried several different lures, before I finally settled back with the March Brown coloured Mepps Bug, mainly because of the conditions.
An hour after the release of the first trout, I finally caught the second trout of the morning in a partly shaded stretch of water. Five minutes later and a little further upstream, after having to climb over a large log jam, I picked up another trout. It looked like the March Brown was the spinner they liked at this stage... and it was because I continued to catch trout on it.
The further I went up the stream the more log jams I had to climb over, which wasn't helping my body all that much, especially when a couple of them were over six feet in height. I went on to catch another four small/medium size trout, before they lost interest in the March Brown colour and that's when I changed to the #00 Stone Fly coloured Bug spinner. The change worked in quick time too. First cast into a small, shallow stretch of water and a little trout took the spinner as soon as it hit the water. The sun was well and truly overhead now, which made the trout a little skittish. Thankfully the Stone Fly Bug was still good enough to attract and catch four more before I decided that I'd had enough.
Actually the main reason that I called it a day was because I could see that there were quite a few large log jams ahead of me and I wasn't into having to climb over them at all. My day was done, with a dozen trout landed in three and a half hours, in what were pretty tough fishing conditions. It was a challenging time spent in the stream today and one that I really enjoyed. There's nothing better than being in a small out of the way stream, that's for sure.
Adrian (meppstas)
Equipment Used This Trip
Okuma Celilo Finesse Spin Rods - ULS 1-3kg
Okuma ITX Carbon Spin Reels - ITX-1000
Platypus Pulse Mono Premium Nylon Monofilament
Platypus Stealth FC Fluorocarbon Leader
Mepps Inline Spinners – Mepps Bug