Overcast, no wind and mild weather conditions had me in the Mersey River by 6:35 am this morning and the first thing I noticed was the trout surface feeding. They were spread out in most sections of the river sipping down the little midges that were floating down the river. I thought nothing of it really because that's what I saw on my last trip to the Mersey River & thought I was in for a tough day but caught & released 22 trout. Well, how wrong was I on this trip because it took me just on an hour before I had my first trout in the net, a nice rainbow taken on the aglia gold spinner.
After the release of that fish I did manage two hit and misses plus one hook up from another rainbow which I lost. I changed over to the ghost brown hard body to see if this may get the trout on the take like my last trip. It took around fifteen minutes before I picked up a brown at the top end of a pool where there was a bit of fast water flowing into it. The surface feeding trout did show some interest in the hard body but not a sign of aggression at all. As I worked my way upstream I had several hit and misses before I finally had another rainbow take the hard body, this was a beautifully coloured fish that went 510 grams. The fishing was certainly tougher than I thought it was going to be with the trout fixed on surface feeding.
Once they are in this mood then it's always going to be tough for the spin fisher, great for the fly fisher's though if they can match the hatch.. With the air being much warmer now the duns and caddis moths were also out and about, something else for the trout to chase. I stuck with the hard body for another forty five minutes and caught & released another two nice browns. With a couple of medium fast flowing runs ahead of me I went back to the gold Aglia and picked up another solid brown which was the last fish of the morning. I tried two more short stretches of fast water with out a sign of a trout so called it a day. As I headed back along the river to where I had parked the car I noticed the trout weren't as large in numbers with the surface feeding now to what they were earlier. This may have been due to the 10-15 kph North Easterly breeze that had now set in.
Adrian Webb (meppstas)
Aglia and Mersey River brown
Bright pink stripes on this Mersey rainbow trout
Brown trout Merseylea
Caddis moths are out about Merseylea
Rainbow trout Merseylea
Mersey River at Merseylea
