Another beautiful day was forecast so I headed over to the Meander River again today for a spin session in the hope of catching a few more trout. I forgot to check the river level on the BOM site before I left and after a drive through heavy fog I finally arrived at the Meander only to find it was running at the same height as my last trip here. Right away I knew I was in for a tough few hours in the river with so much water coming down. I decided to drive to another area that meant for a long walk to the river, but I didn't have to cross it, I could fish it from the side that I entered the river. There are a couple of deep stretches of water that I can bypass quite easily, the rest of it is mainly fast water with a few medium runs thrown in the mix... After a forty minute walk I reached my entry point and started casting the Rapala brown trout lure around without all that much success over the first couple of hundred meters.
I tried a Daiwa Ghost brown, Greedy Guts & Atomic hard body lures followed by a few different Mepps spinners, not one of these drew any attention from a trout. Perhaps they just weren't in the stretches of water I had fished so far, that's all I could put it down to. I had another change of lure, this time it was the Rapala rainbow patten that I went for. Finally after eighty minutes of fishing I had a take from a nice brown that stayed on all the way into the net. This fish was sitting in a small flat water next to a old log that was laying parallel to the river bank and it came hard and fast at the lure taking it without any hesitation. A quick photo then giving it time to recover while I kept it in the water while it was still in the net is was soon on it's way... Now that I had caught a trout I thought I would try another small f3 Rapala one that I have had for quite some time but yet to use, this one's a juvenile rainbow trout patten. I had only moved some twenty meters further upstream when I cast into another shallow flat water next to the river bank when the lure was taken as soon as I started the retrieve. This was a bigger fish than the one I had caught five minutes earlier, it made several runs before I had it in close enough to slip the net under it. Good thing was that it spat the lure once in the net & his beautiful brown went 540 grams, it was returned to the river after a quick photo.
I moved on another five meters and flicked the lure into another small shallow flat water and picked up another brown, this one was a smaller 330 gram fish that I didn't bother to photograph it.That was the last trout I caught over the following kilometer of river, I never had a follow or even spotted a fish until I came to a fast water run when I had my forth hookup. That fish was full of fight made a few leaps & runs before I had it close enough to ease it into the net. Just as I about was to slip the net under it the little Rapala popped out of it's mouth and it away it went. That's when I decided to call it a day, not one of my better days by a long shot. Still catching three trout was much better than not catching any at all which I'll take any day..
Adrian Webb (meppstas)