First trip to The Leven River for the season. 1-2-17
Seeing as I had to go to Ulverstone for an Angling Club meeting I thought I may as well have a few hours of spin fishing in the Leven River at Gunns Plains. This is my first trip the the Leven River this season mainly because of how poorly it has fished over the past few trout seasons. So I'm looking forward to this trip to see how much flood damage has been done from last June, also to see if it has improved fish wise. I'm hoping that there will be a few browns around on this trip. The weather forecast is for showers during the afternoon and the wind, well that's already blowing fairly strong from the North West any way. Today I'm using a brand new Daiwa Presso Iprimi 6'6'' UL spin rod lure wt 1.5 – 5 gm rod, coupled with a brand new Daiwa Gekkabijin MX2004H spinning reel spooled with Platypus 4lb Super 100 mono line and a brand new Mepps Aglia spinner. All I have to do now is christen it with a trout.
- Looking down on Gunns Plains..
I arrived at the river just on 2.30 pm to find it running reasonably low and a light tannin colour, in saying that it still looked pretty good for trout fishing. I decided I would make my way downstream for around 200 meters where I would start off the session from the tail end of a fast water run. This trip I'm starting off with a # 00 gold Aglia because I've always found the gold blade spinner seems to be the colour the trout prefer in this river, well it has on previous trips any way. The first few casts I had a follow from a brown but not any sign of aggression from it. Two cast later I had a solid take and it was fish on, my first here since last season. That wasn't to be, one leap from the river saw it toss the spinner. Over the next fifteen minutes I hooked and lost four other browns not one of my best starts at all, the good thing was I had hooked five browns which showed there are a few trout here. It's still frustrating in losing them, but that's just the way it goes with any type of fishing. I was still very confident this would turn my way sooner or later as the session goes on.
- First five brown lost here..
Once out of that fast water I was into a long stretch of slow deep flowing water, it was here I changed to the hard body lures. I had follow after follow from trout of all sizes but they just would take the hard body lures. I tried every hard body lure that I had with me and not one brown had a go at them. I even went back to the spinners in a #1 size in gold, black & copper blades, the trout came at them but turned away at the last moment and darted back into the deeper water. Two hundred meters of river and not a single fish had a go at the lures. An hour and a half in the river I still hadn't landed a fish, enough to make one scream, but I didn't. Ahead of me is a nice long shallow stretch of fast water, it's here I'll catch my first trout that I'm sure of.
- Wide deep slow flowing stretch of river, plenty of follows..
Over the first ten meters I had a couple of solid hits but still could manage hook one so I thought I would put on another gold Aglia, a new and identical to the one I started the session off with earlier. For some reason the fish weren't staying hooked so I had no choice but to try another one. Two cast later with the new spinner I had a fish on. It wasn't a big fish, but it was holding itself really well in the fast water and once I got it in closer I released it was a rainbow trout. I soon had this little (280 gm) 'bow in the net and back in the river. That's only the second rainbow trout I have caught in the lower reaches of the Leven River, the upper reaches above the Leven Canyon is the area classed as rainbow water. This little one may have come down with the floods. Any way who cares, I finally had my first trout for the day and christened the new gear.
- First for the session..
- Rainbow taken from close to the river bank.
After catching that little 'bow everything fell into place as I worked my way up stream, I kept on catching trout as well as getting a very wet from the rain showers that had now hit the area. I finished up catching and releasing another ten browns before calling I called it a day at 6:40 pm. The browns varied in size from 280 gms up to 520 gms, I had to keep the 520 gm brown because of gill damage after it took the lure deep in the throat which was a shame. I would liked to have fished on for longer but still had to walk back to the car then drive 25 kms back to Ulverstone for the meeting that started at 7:30pm. So what stated off as a frustrating day with the trout ended well after all. It's funny how that identical little Mepps Aglia caught the fish and the other one didn't. Maybe it was because the trout became more aggressive as the afternoon wore on.??
- The 520 gm brown that never made it back into the river..
- Beautifully coloured wild brown trout.
cheers
Adrian
