2019 05 10 525gm brown troutThe weather was fine & sunny today but the wind was still blowing at 25-35 kph with gusts up to 55 kph at times making me wonder if I should stay home or go and tough it out in the same small stream as I did the day before. I decided to do the latter and headed off to fish the stream from where I called it a day yesterday, there was still some good trout water to be fished. I was in the river by 2:10pm and boy the wind was roaring like hell. Good thing was I did have plenty of wind breaks thanks to the thick tea trees that lined both sides of the stream.

Actually I was lucky in one way too, I entered the river approx one hundred metres upstream of where I finished fishing yesterday. The reason I'm saying I was lucky is that I had only been in the river a few minutes when I heard a loud crack that sounded like lightning, it wasn't lightning at all. It was a large gum tree breaking before it came crashing down across the river close to where I would have been had I not stopped short to enter the river. The fishing gods or my dear mum & dad were looking down on me for sure.. Back to the fishing, only needing thirteen trout to hit the 500th trout for the season I was feeling pretty confident of doing it this trip

The spin session started off very well catching two browns on the Aglia gold in the first couple of stretches of water, they were small browns like yesterday. After that I went quiet for around thirty minutes as I fished my way up the narrow little stream. Once the wind started to ease off the fish seemed to come on the take again the further I fished my way up the river. I was hooking a trout on a regular basis now and it was looking like I was going to crack the 500th trout in no time at all. Then it all changed, the trout became non aggressive, I really had to work the Aglia spinner to coax them into taking it in the tannin water.

I was casting the spinner upstream lobbing it close to the banks then retrieving it directly back down the it at the same time giving the rod a light twitch to get the trout to strike the spinner. I had several hits but no hook ups, trout number 500 wasn't going to come easy today, I was going to earn it. It took a while before a decent brown took the gold Aglia, a nice solid fish that went 525 grams and in top condition, it was trout number ten for the spin session. With just the three trout required I was on a high, also feeling more confident I would now reach the number required. The eleventh trout was taken soon after the release of the 525 gram brown, things were looking very good. Well, that's when it happened, the trout shut down again, all I had was a few light hit and misses on the spinner. The trout's aggression was gone again, they were just tapping at the lure & it didn't matter what I tried they just wouldn't take it.

I stuck with the gold Aglia as I still had faith in the little lure, twenty minutes later I had number twelve hooked and landed. With just one trout required and only a couple more stretches of water left to fish before I called it a day I was still confident of catching one more trout. I was into the last water to be fished, this was my last chance to catch that trout. I had several casts into what was a nice wide shallow stretch of water that really looked fishy, I missed the one and only chance from a trout that hit the spinner hard. Yes, I missed hooking it, my chance went begging and I hopped out of the stream feeling pretty disappointed that I blew it. I could have fished on but decided not to push my sore body any longer, I'll leave it for another day.

On the walk back to the car I did think of what could & should have been on the day.. The water level had dropped by a couple of inches from the day before and that probably had a bit to do with the trout coming and going too. It doesn't take much to turn them on or off at the best of times. With twenty days of the brown trout season left I knew I'd get the 500th trout on the next trip any way, I'm only a day or so away before it and several others will be in the net.


Equipment used:
Okuma Celilo 6' ULS 1-3kg trout rod.
Okuma Helios SX20 spin reel.
Platypus Super 100 clear 4lb Ultra High Tenacity Monofilament line.
Mepps Aglia inline spinners.

Adrian Webb (meppstas)


 2019 05 10 525gm brown trout

525gm brown trout

 

2019 05 10 825gms less net weight 300gms 525gms

825gms less net weight 300gms 525gms

 

2019 05 10 Another solid wild tannin water brown

Another solid wild tannin water brown

 

2019 05 10 First of the session

First of the session

 

2019 05 10 First trout caught here

First trout caught here

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