MERSEY GIVES UP BOTH SPECIES IN A FIVE HOUR SESSION 7/3/2014
Headed of to Kimberley this afternoon to give the Mersey River another go at giving up a few trout. The river was running very clear and much lower than my last trip to it. The day was humid and overcast with only the slightest bit of a breeze from the Nth East which wasn't even enough to put a ripple on the water. I stuck with the rainbow pattern Rapala F3 again today as it has been working out well for me lately, and so when you're on a good thing then stick to it I say! I started off flicking the lure into a long run of fast water that flowed into a large pool and just let the lure drift downstream with the flow. I then slowly retrieved it back along the edge of the flow with a light twitch of the rod then let it drift back again and "'bang'" it was hit hard and I had my first fish for the session. After a short battle with this fish which was a rainbow (360gm) I soon had it in the net photographed and returned to the river. Another good start to a session I once again, but will it stay like this for the rest of it I wondered as I've been in this position (like yesterday Meander River) before.
The next couple of runs didn't give up a fish at all, but the following one did and it was a brown that would have gone close to 3 lb I reckon. After it hit the lure hard and fast it made a short dash downstream and on the second leap from the river it tossed the Rapala much to my disgust. This fish looked like it was really well hooked too as I could only see half on the lure exiting it's mouth, how wrong I was. Over the next 300 metres of the Mersey I had a few follows and hooked and lost two more fish before I picked up another well conditioned (320gm) rainbow. They are not big fish but by hell they still give one a run for their money one light tackle that's for sure.
I had now been in the river for just on an hour and a half and I was hoping that the fishing would pick up pretty soon, and it wasn't too long after thinking that, it did. The next two hundred meter run I did have three hook ups, but only landed the one (330gm) brown to the net. This was the first brown landed for the session "'hooray'" at last a brown. As soon as it was in the net the lure popped straight out of it's mouth as it too wasn't that well hooked like the last few browns that I lost. It wasn't that the trebles were blunt as I keep giving them a touch up with a small sharpening stone during my sessions. Probably it's just the way that they're hitting the lure I suppose as I have had to really work the lure to get them into taking it, the browns that is.
I am now around two kilometres upstream from where I started fishing and there is some real nice water ahead of me and so I pretty confident of bagging a few more before calling it a day. I fished the next kilometre of river and had a pretty good session over this distance too. I managed another ten hook ups, sadly though I only landed six of them and lost the rest. The ones I did catch and release were another two rainbows ( 340gm) and four browns with the best one going 750gms.
Five hours I had been in the river when I decided it was time to call it a day as I still had a long walk back to the "'Trout Stalker 2'" and I was knackered. The rocky river bottom of the Mersey is still very slippery and it really takes a toll on the body over that distance and time. So in all I had a reasonably good session on the Mersey today, one of my better ones for a while.
Cheers
Adrian
