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Upper Mersey Wild Browns
By Adrian (meppstas) Webb
With fine weather this morning and rain forecast for later this afternoon, I thought I would get a spin session in before the rain arrived. This trip was to the upper Mersey River, an area on private property and one that I hadn't fished for a couple of months. The reason that I hadn't fished here all that often this trout season is because it's a rough and tough area to get into, plus the river itself has to be one of the toughest stretches of water to fish.
The rocky river bottom is always covered in a brown slime and it is so slippery under foot that at times it's near impossible to stay upright. Not only that, the rocks roll underfoot. Another problem here is that the water weed growth has spread along the river, making spin fishing near impossible in most stretches of water. Another reason that I headed here though was that I wanted to give the tannin waters a rest as well as a have a change of scenery.
It was close to 9:20am when I arrived and parked the car, on a narrow bush track on private property. It was then after a lot bush bashing, followed by a long walk, I was at the river by around 10:00am. The river was running a little higher than I had expected, however it was still at a safe wading depth. The water was a light tannin colour and the river bottom was its normal poor condition as I stated earlier.
Crossing over to the shallower side was going to be slow and easy going, seeing the water level was up a little higher. When crossing a fast water I always face upstream. Once in the fast water I sidestep, then make sure I have a good grip on the rocky bottom before taking the next step. A few minutes was all that it took to reach the shallow side of the river.
I had around one and a half kilometres of fast, medium and slow flowing water ahead of me that would take around three hours to fish. All going well that is and it would depend on how much water weed was in some stretches of water. Going by the amount of water weed that I saw, as I made my way along the river bank to my entry point, it may be less than three hours spent in the river.
The starting lure of choice today was a Mepps #1 Aglia Furia. This is a great all round lure that can be used right throughout the trout season. I haven't used it for quite some time, due to fishing small tannin streams and shallow fast water runs. Today I was hoping it would pick up a trout or two.
The first stretch of water really looked good, with plenty of flat water trout holding areas along the opposite side of the river. Chances of catching the first trout of the day here looked good. Well, what a disappointing start it was. Not a sign of a trout was had in the first two long runs.
A change of lure was done and it was on with the Mepps #1 Aglia Fluo Micropigments Rainbow Silver (rainbow trout) trout spinner, another lure that should attract a trout's attention, providing there are any in the area. Thirty five minutes had passed without a sign of a fish and I was now about to head into the fast water runs.
I decided to give a Mepps Gold #0 Black Fury spinner a workout here. This is another lure that works well on the trout and it is very similar to the one that got me hooked on trout fishing rivers around fifty five years ago. The fast water that I was about to fish is perfect for casting and drifting inline spinners, which is a great way to catch trout. If they were here, the Black Fury would do its job on them. To make matters worse, there was a gusty easterly breeze that had sprung up from nowhere, with the only good thing about it being that it was coming from behind me.
The first twenty metres of fast water done and all I had managed was a couple of follows from medium size trout, for just the one hit and miss. This was a big improvement from the waters fished earlier however. Before I fished the rest of the fast water, I headed into a small side water to the right of me. This is a water that I've fished every time that I had come here and a water that had never let me down.
Today was a good day to fish the side water as with the river running higher there was a good flow of water running through it. The only downside was the amount of water weed that had grown in it. That wasn't going to stop me from fishing it though. Being a narrow run of water, there was no room for the cast and drift here. Instead it was a matter of casting and retrieving the lure straight down with the flow. All one had to do here was make an accurate cast into water that didn't have weed in it, then on the retrieve keep the rod tip high to keep the spinner just under the water surface. By doing that it would get the lure to run over the top of the weed and any trout that was sitting in weedless pockets of water would still have a go at the spinner.
After a couple of casts and retrieves up along the right hand side of the side water, without a touch, it was the third cast and retrieve straight up the left hand side that gave up the first fish of the session. A small, 270 gram, brown snapped up the Gold Black Fury halfway into the retrieve of the spinner. It had taken quite some time to catch the first trout and it was a relief that I had finally broken the drought. This little side water lived up to the expectations. It is one that has always given up a few trout each time that I'd flicked a lure into it and it had done it again today.
I only had to move up some three metres, then, with a long cast into a pocket of water that was clear of weed, I had another brown take the Black Fury. This trout was larger than the last one. All of a sudden I had picked up two browns in seven minutes. How quickly things can turn around and that's what I love about chasing trout in rivers and streams.
I spotted a nice little one metre wide piece of flat water, some fifteen metres further up and to the right of me, which required an accurate cast to lob the 2.5 gram Gold Black Fury spinner between a fallen tree branch and the river bank. I waited for a drop in the wind, then flicked the spinner to where I wanted it to land in the narrow flat water. It was the perfect cast and it landed exactly where I wanted.
No sooner had I started to retrieve and the Black Fury was taken by a solid brown. This was certainly the best fish of the session. It really took off once hooked and made several leaps from the water, before heading into the water weeds. Here it held out for a short time, before it becoming free of the weed and I managed to lead it into the net. It wasn't what one would call a large fish, however it was still the best of the three caught so far and it went 455 grams after deducting the total net weight (410gms) from the digital scales.
That fish was taken eight minutes on from the last fish. As far as I was concerned, the little side water had done its job for me, giving up three trout in fifteen minutes. As I reached the top end of it, where the main stream entered, I hooked and lost a small brown, before I headed back into the main stream where I had entered the side water.
Once back in the main stream I could go back to using the cast and drift method that I love using when fishing fast water runs. The first cast, up and across the river and the Black Fury was taken as soon it had lobbed in a flat water next to the river bank. This was another quality wild Mersey River brown trout. With four trout caught and released things were looking a lot better now and as long as it continued like this I'd be happy.
From here on things slowed down. I was having the odd follow on the Gold Black Fury, however for some reason the trout didn't show any signs of aggression toward it. So, a change of lure was had. I went for the Mepps #0 March Brown coloured Bug spinner, which is a good back up lure to use at this time of the trout season, seeing as there's still plenty of grasshoppers around. It's the same colour as the hoppers, so I was 'matching the hatch'.
I continued fishing my way upstream, only to find that the fast water run was dead. All that I had over a hundred metres of water was two follows, for one hooked and lost trout. Here I was thinking I would easily catch another three or more trout in that fast water stretch and to finish up with zilch didn't go down very well.
From there I moved into the wide slow/medium flowing weed filled water and it was here that I hooked and lost two small trout in quick time. I was having a lot of problems here, with the water weed fouling the spinner while fishing a shallow run of water. It wasn't until I had moved into a deeper run, forty minutes later, that I picked up a beautiful well-conditioned trout. I had cast the spinner into a small flat water, close to the river bank, when two trout appeared from nowhere and came up behind the March Brown spinner. By lifting the rod tip higher and getting the lure to sit close to the surface, the larger of the two trout took it! This fish was a little larger than the one caught in the side water, a solid brown weighing 485 grams.
The wind had eased off a little bit, which was good, however the going was still really tough with the rocks rolling underfoot. It was hard to stay upright and several times I went close to taking a dive. To make matters worse the water weeds were wrapping around my legs and making it that much harder on the body. I pushed on and ten minutes later I picked up another nice brown using the same method that caught the last trout.
I then lost one, before moving back to the left hand side of the river where it was shallower. I bypassed the rest of the weed covered water as it was knocking me around too much and not worth the effort for very little reward. That was the last trout caught for quite some time, before I picked up the seventh trout once back in the fast water. Not long after that I had the eighth of the spin session landed. The eighth trout was the smallest fish of the day and both fish were caught using the cast and drift method.
I still had half a kilometre of river to fish and I was very choosy about which areas I fished. With just the one hit and miss, I called it a day. With only eleven hook ups, for eight trout caught and released, it was probably a good day overall, although I was expecting it to be better than it was. I always expect my days in a river to be good and when the trout are scarce, like they were today, I count them as poor days... when really they're not all that bad after all.
PS: In my YouTube video I stated the best fish was the 455 gram trout, however I forgot about the 485 gram brown I caught forty minutes later... I certainly had a brain fade once back at the car...
Adrian (meppstas)
Equipment Used:
Okuma Celilo Finesse Spin Rods - ULS 1-3kg Trout Rods
Okuma Helios Spin Reels - HSX-20
Okuma Inspira Blue Spin Reels - ISX-20B
Platypus Super 100 Monofilament Fishing Line
Platypus Pre-Test Monofilament Fishing Line
Platypus Stealth FC Fluorocarbon Leader
Mepps Inline Spinners
Boomerang Tool Products