Stream trout on surface lures

Dan Clifton
When dwelling on what I had written over the past 12 months, I realised that I have not written and article that did not involve the use of soft plastics, although there is no argument that I believe that they are one of the most effective way of catching fish in Tasmania, there is a real passion of mine that I had forgotten about. That is the use of hard bodied surface lures.

I spent my time growing up on the Murrumbidgee River in NSW and in the heat of summer when it was too hot to sleep; there was no better way to spend the evening by the river throwing surface poppers at Murray cod and yellow belly.
In recent times with the introduction of the well made Japanese lures there has been some incredible advances in surface lures such as the Daiwa and Jackall range aimed at the bream fisherman, these surface poppers/walkers have been a great addition to the tackle box of the competition angler and have proved to be not only lethal but extremely fun to use when the fish are on the top and sucking down bait fish and other insects that come their way.
As the bream fishing has been well saturated with articles on all types techniques I decided to look at catching trout in small streams using these modern surface lures.
After looking for a stream that still had some water in it after such a dry winter, I found a nice stream in the north east of the state with what looked like a sure thing, with waders on the camera on my back, Kathy and I headed into the bush looking for an entry point to get in.
We climbed down a steep bank and into the stream. Immediately in front of us was a nice slow flowing pool, these pools are what I had intended on fishing with these surface lures. My thought was that this would be the best location to get some action using these lures. After my first cast and some immediate attention I knew that I was going to be in for some really good fishing. There was also a caddis hatch going on at the time which was working in my favour as these active little stream trout where heavily concentrating on the surface bite.
By this time I had already spooked my first candidates and moved above the pool, and unsure if it was the colour I was using I decided to change.
The next lure I tied on after seeing the interest shown to the surface was a Jackall Tawodi in a brown colour with an orange belly. It looked something along the lines of a grasshopper. Grasshopper patterns are deadly in any lure style when the hoppers are out, but in this thick forest I wasn't sure whether these fish would even know what one looked like.
I gave a nice long cast up the stream so I could lay the line back better on my spool. I was winding it quickly and bang I was on. It was not a large fish but any trout in the rapids where the water is only two inches deep, is great action.
So now my plans to only fish the slow deep pools had been radically changed, not only could I fish the pools, but the entire stream.
I had taken a nice array of soft plastic bulky hawks with me, as I deep down believed that using these surface lures in such a small shallow stream may have proved fruitless.
But I was quickly corrected and found that I have rarely done better on plastics than I was doing on the Towadi.
Well I guess I better fill you in on how I was using this lure so effectively, I am in no way an expert in surface fishing and I have done zero for trout. But I am so keen to improve this technique I am going to do this article in two parts, the next edition will be using the same lures but in the lakes, to see how effective they can be on some large brownies.
First of all you need to pick your surface lure, as I mentioned before I know of two readily available in Launceston, these are the Daiwa Presso Cicada Pencil and Jackall Trode, there is considerable difference in price in these lures and they have similar action, however the more expensive Towadi seems to look a bit more natural in the water over the Daiwa.
Most of the larger fish came from the slower pools where you could really tweak the lure and make it dance, a larger quantity of small fish were taken in the rapids.
In the pools I would cast deep and as hard to the structure as possible, then using a moderate retrieve and twitching the rod tip the lure would get a nice zig zag pattern happening (also known as walking the dog).
The trout in the pools would hear the light popping sound and go straight into feeding mode, they would fight over the lure, often leaving the first cast empty, as they slowed down a little the action would pick up, it wasn't unusual to catch several fish out of one small pool.
When fishing the shallow rapids it was more of a fast retrieve with a twitch that the little rainbows would chase some 10-15m down the stream to lock onto.
It was quite amazing watching the reaction to a surface lure, a lure that they would have never seen before had them keen as mustard.
The stream I was fishing did not seem to have high numbers of brown trout although at times in the year that is all you catch, but none the less one or two fell victim to the red hot Towadi.
I look forward to giving you details on the results of fishing Arthurs lake using surface lures, I am sure the results will be just as impressive as they have been in the streams.
Merry Christmas and a safe New Year.

Dan Clifton