With another day of howling winds I decided to go and see what the Mersey River had to offer at Weegena this afternoon. It's been quite a while since I've had a session there and I was looking forward to it as it normally fishes well at this time of year. Once there I strolled out onto Dylan's Bridge to check out the river and I couldn't believe how low the river was.

 Not only was it low but it also had some massive runs of water weed and algae in most sections of it. This is not what I wanted to see as it's so difficult to spin the river with so much weed and green cotton like algae every where. Anyway I thought I'm here now so might as well have a go and see what happens. It was now just on 2.00 PM and there was good shade along the right hand side of the river which is the deeper side and the side of the river that has the best flow. One good thing was that there was hardly any wind here, so that was one good thing about the trip to Weegena. Now all I need is for a few fish to be in an aggressive mood.

     The first hundred meters only gave up a single follow from a very nice brown that would have been in the one kilo range. This fish wasn't all that interested as it sat some 100mms to 150mms back from the Rapala lure. The cotton like algae was becoming a real pain in the butt as it kept fouling the lure. To make matters worse the algae was starting to break up and drift with the flow and this was the main problem causing the foul ups. In another week it will all be gone once it starts  breaking up like this. I decided to put on the little Mepps black fury (black blade) that worked really well yesterday in the hope it will do the same again today. Well it nearly did, as I did manage three hook ups over the next couple of hundred metres but lost every one of them. At least I did have a bit of action, but the attack on the spinner wasn't really that aggressive from the trout. The wind had now arrived here and was blowing straight down the river and so I made the decision to finish up here and head of to Merseylea and give it another go seeing it fished reasonably well yesterday.

     Arrived at Merseylea close on 3.45pm and started working the black fury in small fast water and had jut the one hit and miss from a very small brown. Worked my way on upstream for another two hit and misses before I changed lures once again. This time it was on with a small Rapala CD-1 rainbow patten. The first thirty meters of using this lure didn't produce a single fish, but then the next ten meters I picked up two nice well conditioned ( 390gms & 430gms) browns. The next stretch of river was a little deeper and slow flowing and it wasn't long before I had another fish on. This one soon tossed the lure after a couple of leaps from the river. The CD-1 is a very small (30mm) lure with just the one set of trebles attached at the tail end of it, and so I changed to a F3 in a rainbow pattern in the hope that this double treble lure may give me a better hook up rate. 

     It was now 5.30 PM and I had worked my way some 800 metres or so upstream from where I entered the river and thought I would just fish on more small stretch of fast water to see if I could at least get one or two more trout before calling it a day. Well I had three hook ups in that fast water and did land one (360gm) rainbow and lost the other two (brown & rainbow) trout. Today's fishing was quite the opposite with only three fish caught and released compared to the seven yesterday. Still, had those that I lost stayed on it would have more than likely been just as good or a little better, but that's fishing isn't it. It was still an enjoyable day on the Mersey River once again and it doesn't really get any better than that.

Cheers

Adrian