One Trout For Each Kilometer Of River.

Post by **meppstas** » Fri Oct 31, 2014 1:25 pm

'' ONE TROUT FOR EACH KILOMETER OF RIVER.''
30-10-14
Headed off to a private property that covers a lot of the Mersey River and it's an area that hasn't fished that well over the past few seasons too. But seeing as it used to produce a lot of trout over the years I thought it was worth another visit. Overcast conditions and gusty WSW winds of around 20kph were blowing which was better than the Easterlies we've been getting.
Parked the car in the bush and headed off for a good hours walk through paddocks and then some bush bashing before I finally reached the river. It looked really good too and especially the river bottom as it was clear off slime and algae not like the lower sections of The Mersey River. It was running a dark tannin colour from recent rain but it looked very fishy. I did notice that there were plenty of caddis moths about plus some duns and also what looked like a few black spinners hovering above the water. There wasn't any signs of a fish rising though which wasn't a good sign.

I was also trying out a new little Okuma Pisces 800 spinning reel today and was hoping to christen it on a few trout. It's even smaller than the Okuma Vsystem 15a ones that I normally use as it only holds 70 meters of 4lb mono. I filled it Carbotex premium high sensitive line that was recommended to me some time ago and I rushed out and bought a couple of spools of it. I had used it on the other reels and did have quite a few problems with it back then with it looping all the time. But I thought I would give it another go.

Well the first couple of cast all went well, then it started to loop and tangle like before. Well this happened a few times and then it came good. After some ten minutes I had my first brown on and it really swallowed the little copper black fury. So much so that it was bleeding from the gills and I was forced to keep this little 290gm brown. Well, now I have to catch at least one or two more for the smoker as it's not worth making a brine just to smoke one small fish.
I fished for at least another two and a half kilometers without even a sign of a fish and it was looking like this little brown was just going in the pan with a bit of butter and seasoned salt. The two and a half kilometers wasn't all fun either as the line decided to go all haywire on me on a regular basis. I was really getting pretty ticked off by this too. I had even put a #0 (2.5gm) copper black fury on to see if the extra weight may make a difference. But it didn't, this line was just not was it was made out to be and that's it.

With just over half a kilometer of river left before I was to get out of the river I was lucky enough to pick up the two browns that I required for smoking. These two (280 &290gm) browns were both taken within ten meters of each other too. That was the last of the fish to be caught before I exited the river and headed off back to the car. It turned out to be a rather frustrating day with the fact that this long stretch of river was still very low on fish stocks and that bloody line didn't make the fishing any easier either. That line has now been tossed as well. The little reel did perform well and is now filled with Diawa 4lb line that I should have put on in the first place.

One thing I did forget to put in this article was the trout I spotted in a back water as I was heading off through the paddocks. It was a nice solid brown that was surface feeding on duns. I checked this piece of back water out as I headed back to the car, but that brown had moved on. So three trout over three kilometers of river in four hours was much less than I was hoping for. It will be some time before I venture back there that's for sure. Though the scenery is quite stunning and so it's more than likely I will hit it again before season's end.
Cheers
Adrian