I just love this time of year with it's cool nights & mornings that slowly turn into beautiful still mild Autumn days. It's also a great time of the trout season for chasing trout in the rivers for me as well. It was another cool morning when I arrived at the Meander River for another spin session with the river still flowing at a nice wading height. I started the session off with the lure that has done well on the trout over a few trips and that was the copper Aglia Mouche Noire spinner. The water temperature has now dropped to a cool ten degrees, I'm hoping for more good results like I had in this river on my last trip when I caught & released 15 browns. I was in the river by 7:20 am and it wasn't too long before I had my first trout take the spinner which was good, it was a nice 280 gram brown.
Ten minutes later I had my second brown trout in hand then just on thirty minutes later I picked up my third brown of the morning. Those three trout were caught using the cast and drift method a system that always works well on the trout in most fast/medium flowing waters. As I continued to fish my way upstream I picked up three more small browns from six hook ups while still using the cast and drift with the Aglia spinner before I thought it was time to get out of the river & try another area further downstream. I headed to the same stretch of river that gave up the fifteen trout on my last trip. I had no sooner flicked the Mouche Noire into a small pool when I had a immediate hook up from a small/medium size brown, the next cast into the same pool I had trout number eight on the river bank. After that I moved into a long wide medium depth of flowing water, it was here I changed to a hard body lure. The fishing was pretty slow going with not too many signs of trout like the last time I was here.
In the end I did manage to pick up three medium size browns from six hook ups before deciding to get out and head off to another fast water run three kilometres away. When I arrived there the river was in full sun so I knew it would be tough catching any trout here, but still thought it was worth having a go. With the river being in full sun I was only going to fish a three hundred meter stretch of fast water, if that fished well then I'll fish on. There wasn't a sign of a fish for the first one hundred and fifty meters, it wasn't looking good and I did think about calling it a day. It was off with the copper Aglia spinner and on with a small #00 (1.5g) black fury chartreuse colour on a black blade. It's a lure I normally use early in the season and only in small tannin streams. There are times when I do try something different and this was one of them, it worked when a very small yearling brown trout took it. Not long after releasing that little brown I had a follow from another brown & that's as far as it went. With the fishing still being on the quiet side I thought I'd try another small light weight spinner I hadn't used in eight years. Another small one that I used to use in the small tannin streams. This one was a brown bladed lure that's called a Streamepps, it only weighs 0.9 grams.
A few flicks up and across the river then letting it drift with the flow at the same time keeping the line taught I picked up a small very aggressive little brown on it. Once released and being only twenty meters from where I had parked the “Trout Stalker 2” I called it a day. Even though the trout were few and far between and I had to try three different stretches of river to catch thirteen trout it was still a fairly good spin session in the river.
Adrian Webb (meppstas)
First trout of the spin session
Steamepps lure that caught a small brown
Streamepps and wild brown trout
Trout hooked and lost here
Two trout picked up here on the Aglia Mouche Noire
