Still needing two more trout to reach the 500 mark which I want to do before the end of February and given there is rain on the way today I hit the Meander River at 7:30 am in the hope of getting the two fish required before the weather arrives later on. I'm going fish a two kilometre stretch that has a mix of medium & fast flowing water, it a nice peaceful area to fish too and it does hold some nice browns. This trip I'll only be using hard body lures too because I feel they'll do the job for me today, if they don't then it's on with the Mepps spinners.

The back half is gone!

I will be starting off with the ghost brown lure seeing this little lure has worked well on the trout here on previous trips... After having quite a few follows from some interested browns over the first fifteen minutes it wasn't all that long before I had take from a brown that I lured away from a flat water close to the river bank. All I was hoping was for this trout to stay on and not toss the lure as it made several runs up and down the river as well as leaping from the river a few times. It did stay on and I carefully eased trout number 499 for the 2017/18 season into the landing net, it wasn't a large trout (430 grams) but it was one of two that I needed today. As I reached down to take hold of it and remove the lure I noticed it was hooked by the front set of trebles of the lure, the back half of the lure was gone.

I don't know if it had broken off when the trout played up in the net or after it was hooked and made it's leaps for freedom. A couple of photos and it was back in the river... It was on with another ghost brown lure then around five minutes I had the most wanted trout on the line, it was a solid fish that was full of fight too. This is one also made quite few runs and leaps from the river as I kept a tight line on it. It seemed to take ages before I managed to slip the net under this well conditioned brown, the trout I wanted was in the net. The wait was over and the aim of reaching 500 trout by the end of February was reached on the last day of the month as well, nothing like a close finish. One thing that did happen though was when this trout was in the net the fine 4lb mono had wrapped around the treble hooks and cut the line.

The fishing gods were back again to give me a hand today by the looks of it. I fished on for another two hours in beautiful conditions before the cloud set in and some light rain fell for a short time. Over the two hours I caught and released another twelve well conditioned browns (eight in a row before I lost the first trout) from fourteen hook ups which made for a top few hours in the river & a great to finish off the end of February. The best brown went 670 grams and most of the trout caught & released today were all over 500 grams.

Adrian Webb

Meander River

The damaged lure

No.499

No.500

Other Trout