Tackle Tactics » Tips-Techniques » Adrian-Webbs-Trout-Tips » Warmer Weather Brings on the Trout
Warmer Weather Brings on the Trout
By Adrian (meppstas) Webb
It's been a week since my last fishing session, due to a trip to the hospital and today I was finally well enough to head off in the hunt for some wild brown trout. The weather was sitting on 17 degrees when I arrived at my destination. Once in the water I knew that I would get a few trout, seeing as the water temp was touching seven degrees.
The water level was down by around three inches, since my last visit, but it still had enough depth and flow for a spin session. The Okuma Celilo Finesse ULS 6' 1-3kg trout rod coupled with a Helios HSX-20 spin reel was already set up with the small Mepps #00 gold Aglia spinner and that's what I started the session with.
The first stretch of water that I fished was one that always looks like it should hold a trout but like always it didn't. I'm sure one day it will surprise me. Neither did the following wide shallow run but the following stretch of medium flowing water did, where I had a follow from a small half interested brown trout and that's as far as it went.
I immediately went for a change of lure and it was a #0 Aglia Fluo Micropigments Brown/Gold (brown trout colour) that I went for. With the water temp sitting on seven degrees I thought the duller blade colour would be better suited to the conditions.
The change of lure worked and the following stretch of water saw the first trout of the session caught, a small brown that was full of aggression. After that it became a little frustrating as the trout were there and all very aggressive, the only problem was that I hooked and lost three in a row.
It was still good to see that the trout were out and about and eager to attack the Aglia Fluo spinner. After hooking and losing three in a row I was seriously thinking about going to a small hard body, however I decided to stick with the Aglia Fluo a little longer.
There were plenty of good stretches of water ahead of me that would be holding trout, it was only a matter of time before one was landed. It was only five minutes later when I had the second trout well and truly hooked, a nice solid brown it was too. After a good tussle with this young male brown I had it in the net. It went 410 grams and was in top condition. This trout was taken close to the right hand river bank in a narrow stretch of fast flowing water.
A few minutes later, fishing a wide shallow run, I was onto my third trout of the afternoon. This trout was a bigger fish than the last one. A long cast up and close to the right hand side of the river and a medium retrieve, to keep the spinner at the same speed as the water, sucked that trout right in. That cast and retrieve, being close to the river bank, drew the trout out from an undercut in the river bank and it didn't hesitate to take the Aglia Fluo spinner. It, like the previous trout, was a beautifully coloured well-conditioned trout that went 460 grams.
Two casts later to the top end of the same stretch of water and trout number four took the spinner. This fish wasn't as big as the previous one but it was still a decent size trout. So, after losing three trout in a row, I now had caught and released four in a row. It's funny how quickly it can turn around in one's favour.
From here on the trout were being caught on a regular basis, around 8-10 minutes apart and before I knew it I had caught nine in a row, taking my catch into double figures for only the third time this season.
The going wasn't all that easy and the further I went up this tannin stream, log jams were becoming more frequent and getting over them wasn't what I needed to be doing. With the trout all being good size, solid fish it was well worth the effort that I was putting in and that's why I stuck to it.
The thought of the change of lure that I had earlier on had gone right out the door and I was quite happy with the results the Aglia Fluo had produced. I decided that I would push on a little further to see if I could crack the dozen mark with my catch, which would better my best season catch of eleven trout. I caught trout number eleven in reasonably quick time and was feeling quite confident that the twelfth and even the thirteenth trout was in the bag.
I fished well on, eighty metres of river, for just the one follow after the release of the eleventh fish. Trout number twelve wasn't looking all that good now. It was 4:20pm when I decided to fish one more, shallow piece of water before calling it a day. The very first cast to the top end of the medium/fast run and I hooked my twelfth trout, only to see it toss the spinner on its second leap from the water.
My day was done and I had finished it with the loss of a fish... not how I had wanted the spin session to end at all. Overall it was still a top two and a half hours fishing the tannin waters and even better was the size of the trout caught in it. Trout of this size were quite common many years ago and hopefully they're here to stay.
Equipment Used:
Okuma Celilo Finesse Spin Rods - ULS 6' 1-3kg trout rod
Okuma Helios SX Spin Reel - HSX-20
Mepps Lures
Platypus Super 100 mono lines
Adrian (meppstas)