Tackle Tactics » Tips-Techniques » Adrian-Webbs-Trout-Tips » Working Around the Weed
Working Around the Weed
With a strong and gusty South Easterly wind forecast for later in the day, I thought an early start was the go, so I was in the Mersey River by 6:00am in beautiful cool conditions. Not that I was cold at all because I had just completed a 1.5 kilometre walk to reach the river.
It was running clear and quite warm too, plus there was heaps of green algae, as well as a brown slime, covering the river bottom. The river didn't look all that good to me, not only that most areas were full of water weeds.
There were several long wide stretches of river that I didn't fish at all because of the water weeds and algae. I stuck to fishing the fast water runs and even they weren't all that good to fish with the green, cotton-like algae fouling the blade spinner on a regular basis.
I was using a #0 Mepps Aglia Fluo Micropigments in a brown pattern (Brown/Gold colour) and hooked and lost two rainbows in quick time. Ten minutes later I had my first trout in the net. It was a lovely well-conditioned 420g rainbow that gave me a run for my money in the fast water. After a quick photo it was soon back in the river. Several minutes later I had my second rainbow trout in the net. It like the first one was a beautifully coloured, solid fish.
After the release of that rainbow it all went backwards, when I fished a long shallow fast water and I hooked and lost seven trout in a row! After losing the first four I changed over to a plain gold #00 Aglia and that little spinner lost three fish before the forth taker made it into the landing net. It was a little 280g brown and once in the net it tossed the lure, so I was lucky it made it to the net.
Over this season I reckon I've hooked and lost more trout than I've caught on quite a few trips. This is something that happens when fishing fast water runs quite often as the trout normally have one crack at the lure and are frequently lipped, then with one head shake they're gone. It's something that I accept when fishing fast water, but when the trout fishing is tough it does annoy the hell out of me.
With just a few fast water stretches left to fish I changed to a #1 Aglia Furia, just as the South Easterly wind arrived and blew at around 20kph or more. I continued fishing the last three fast water runs and managed to hook five more browns, with only two brown trout landed.
Today I tried a new Okuma Helios SX 20 spinning reel, spooled with a fine 4lb mono line. Boy, it was a little beauty. It's a light, well-balanced, quality reel that worked a treat with the Okuma ULS 6'6'' 1-3 kg rod today. So anyone who's looking for the ideal lightweight set up, this is it and it's reasonably priced too.
Tight Lines
Adrian (meppstas) Webb