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Wading the Leven River
By Adrian (meppstas) Webb
I've been waiting for weeks for the Leven River to drop to a safe wading height and finally today it was nearly there, just a little over the 400 megalitres (415mgs) level, however that's all that was needed for me to head over there. I was in the river at 7:30am (later than I wanted, due to sleeping in) to find it was running a little faster and around 50mm higher than I thought it would be. I just had to be careful in a few areas, that's all.
It was a good dark tannin colour, which wasn't a problem as that's how I prefer it. The first area that I fished was a long, wide, deep stretch of water and here I gave a hard body lure a good workout, without having a follow or hit from a trout. It was the fast water runs that I was more interested in anyway and that's where I headed as quickly as I could.
The sky was clear and the sun was already hitting the water. Not only that, a gusty 20kph South Westerly was now coming straight down the river. I tried a few Mepps spinners (Aglia Furia, Copper Aglia Mouche Noire and Stone Fly Bug), while I slowly fished my way up the fast water, for just one soft hit and miss on the Mouche Noire, before changing over to a gold #0 Black Fury spinner.
It was just on 8:25am when I finally hooked and landed my first trout of the morning, at 285g. It had taken nearly an hour to catch the first trout, something that I thought would have happened a lot sooner rather than later. A little further up I had a hit and miss on the Black Fury and that was it. The trout weren't around like I was expecting them to be. This time last year I caught and released nineteen trout in this stretch of river, in dull overcast conditions, plus I was on the river by 5:55am and the river level was much lower than today.
To the left of me was the narrow back water that gave up a few trout on my last trip here, so that's where I headed. A few casts with the Black Fury, into the tail end of it, didn't attract any trout, so I decided to try a #0 Aglia Fluo Micropigments in the rainbow pattern (Rainbow Silver), a spinner that I haven't used in this river before. I had nothing to lose, so why not give it a go. It has done well in the other rivers that I've fished when the going has been tough.
With more water flowing in the back water than on previous trips, I felt I had a good chance of picking up a few trout from the halfway mark to the top end of it. A good thing was that this back water was well shaded by the trees and foliage along the whole length of it. No sooner had I reached the halfway mark and on the retrieve of the first cast, to the left hand side of the back water, I had a take from a medium size brown, only to see it toss the spinner on the second jump from the water.
It was out with the small sharpening stone to give the trebles a bit of a touch up and make sure they were well and truly sharp. Each time that I change lures I normally give the hooks a touch up, however this time I forgot to do it with this particular spinner.
With the left hand side of the back water being the deeper side, that's where I would concentrate on casting the spinner. This is because it had a bubble line along it, creating a nice trout feeding area. It was only a minute after losing the last fish, when I was onto another brown, however this one was larger and well hooked. After a good tussle with the brown I had it in the net.
This trout had taken the lure well down its throat into the gill cage area, which wasn't good. When I checked the trout there was severe gill damage, so I put it out of its misery in quick time. It's not very often that I have to do this either, just on the very odd occasion it happens that I have to keep one. I was happy to pick up a decent size brown and also disappointed at having to kill it at the same time. That's a part of trout fishing and it's only the fifth trout that I've kept, from the over two hundred that I've caught so far this season, so I suppose that's not a bad a result anyway.
I continued working the left hand side as I slowly fished my way upstream and picked up three more trout from four takes, in reasonably good time. Four trout caught in twenty five minutes was a nice turn around. The last trout was taken at the top end of the back water and it was time (9:55am) to go back into the main stream and fish in full sun again.
Back into the fast water it was and it didn't take all that long before the Aglia Fluo drew the attention of a small brown that came hard and fast from near the river bank and took the spinner. I now had half a dozen trout caught, which was much better than I had expected seeing as the longest and best fast water runs only gave up the one trout. This little trout was caught at 10:16am and it wasn't until 10:46am that I caught the next trout, another small/medium size brown.
With the trout fishing being pretty slow and with the wind blowing at around 20-25kph, coming straight down the river, I decided to head back to the car and try another short stretch of river above and below Marshall's Bridge, a few kilometres further downstream.
When I arrived at the bridge the wind was really roaring through the area. It's a lot more open than where I had just finished fishing and there's not a lot of foliage along the river banks here, so I doubted it would be a long spin session. The first area that I fished had a nice medium fast water stretch on it and I hooked and lost a medium size trout, after it gave a solid head shake.
With the water being much shallower here I decided the rainbow Aglia was a little too bright, so I changed over to the brown trout (Brown/Gold) Aglia Fluo Micropigments spinner because it's more suited to the shallow tannin water. It took around thirty minutes, when I was close to the bridge, before I had another strike. This time the trout stayed on all the way to the net. It was a small brown that had taken the lure and was the second smallest trout of the day.
I fished on for another forty minutes, which was really a waste of time and even though I had several follows the trout had shut down. My day was done. The wind was still blowing hard and it was twenty six degrees. I was hot, tired and sore. It was time to head for home... nine trout caught for the spin session wasn't all bad I suppose, given the conditions, however still not good enough for the four and a half hours spent chasing them.
Equipment Used:
Okuma Celilo Finesse Spin Rods - 1-3kg ULS trout rod
Okuma Helios SX Spin Reel - HSX20
Mepps Lures - Aglia Fluo Micropigments
Platypus Super 100 Monofilament
Platypus Stealth FC Fluorocarbon Leader
Adrian (meppstas)