Great day on the Meander River 6/1/2016

It was early start once again on the Meander River this morning and it was one of those beautiful mornings too. No wind, overcast and 5 degrees, absolutely great conditions for another session on the river. Today I'm fishing a different stretch of river, one that I haven't fished for around four years at least. I felt that with the way the river has fished below the bridge then perhaps it's time I gave the four kilometres of river above it a go. I was in the river at 5.40am and started off with the black fury today because the first one hundred meters was all shallow fast water. I was onto a small brown on the second cast but lost the little fella. That was the only hit for the first twenty meters, after that is when the fishing really picked up. Over the rest of this fast water stretch I caught & released seven nice browns from eight hook ups with the best brown going 540 gms. This was a great start, one I haven't had like this for some time.

The next few kilometres ahead are a mixture of medium and fast water stretches one of them being a 60 meter deep medium flowing piece of water. Just as I reached the bottom end of it I came across a large dead brown trout that was in a shallow pocket of water on the rivers edge. It had more than likely died of natural causes, from what I could see there weren't any marks on it. It had been in the water there for some time too as it was covered in a brown slimy algae. This fish would have been around 5 lb too, it was also a little smelly too as I wiped some of the algae off it for a photo.
I changed over to a Rapala for this long stretch of water and didn't pick up fish until I had reached the head water where I had just the two hook ups for the one small (260gm) brown. I was now back into fast shallow stretches of river for the next couple of kilometres so it was back on with the little black fury. The sun had now burnt off the cloud and the air had warmed up quite a bit, but there was still shade along the opposite and deepest side of the runs I was fishing. Over the next couple of kilometres I had fourteen hook ups with thirteen browns caught and released. These were all nice solid river browns with the best one going 550gms and the smallest 380gms. It was now 1.10pm and I was totally knackered, plus I also had a good three kilometre walk back to the car. I did sit on a shaded log at the river bank for ten minutes to take it all in on how the day had panned out. What a good decision it has been to give this stretch of river another go after many years of not fishing it.
Once back at the car I couldn't open the esky quick enough to suck down a couple of icy cold cans of Pepsi Max. Today's session equalled my best trip to the Meander River back on the 16th November 2015 when I also caught & released 21 browns. Today's catch has boosted my season tally too 369 now, I'm in pain today but can't wipe the smile off my face either.. This puts me 143 up for the same time last season..

cheers Adrian