Another beautiful day had me heading over to the Meander River for a spin session, one that didn't last all that long. Why it didn't last all that long was when I arrived there I found the water level was pretty high and the area I was to fish wasn't looking all that safe for wading. Seeing how well I know the river here I still thought it may be worth having a go to see if I could still catch a trout or two. The hardest part was crossing the above waist deep water, a couple of times I thought of turning back but knowing it was only going to get shallower I kept going.. Where I crossed wasn't really fast water but it was deep and had quite a bit of force in the flow and that was my main concern at the time... Once I had reached the other side and using a brown trout F3 Rapala I slowly fished my way upstream.
I had a couple of follows before I had my first brown take the lure, a solid fish that made one hard run towards the middle of the river, then as it leapt from the river it tossed the lure. A little further up the river the very same thing happened again so I changed lures, I went with a rainbow F3 Rapala. After pushing my way upstream in knee deep for some thirty meters against a strong flow of water I had another taker, this fish stayed on & made it all the way to the net after a good fight. It was a lovely well conditioned brown that went 480 grams. I had to get out of the river and walk the river bank for quite some distance because of the water being a little on the deep side and unsafe for wading... I returned to the river and continued on fishing, this time it was all fast water and boy it was really tough going against the flow as well. Even though it was only knee deep here, it was much harder working my way upstream in the fast water. I had also changed the lure before I returned to the river, this time I went for the Greedy Guts in the bloody tiger prawn colour. I keep casing it into what flat water I came across on either side of the river and had several hit and misses before I had my second brown on and in the net.
This fish was close to the same size and condition of the first one I landed earlier. I felt the river level had risen a little more than when I first started fishing so I decided it was time to get the hell out of here and head back to the car. Seeing as I was on the high side of the river I thought it would be easier to do a little bit of bush bashing then climb a steep hill to reach the road. From there all I had was a ¾ kilometer walk along a dirt road to the car, much easier than walking through the paddocks then having to cross back over the river in what was probably well above waist high water now.
Adrian Webb
