Still a little sore from doing some gardening etc over the weekend and having the Monday off from fishing I made the decision to go for a spin session in the Mersey River after lunch today. I was in the river at 1:30 PM in what was bright warm sunny conditions, the sun full on the clear water and a gusty North Easterly wind blowing. I started off with a small ghost brown hard body and had a take on the very first cast, the reel screamed for a short time before a solid rainbow leaped from the river and tossed the lure. I couldn't set the hooks because I hadn't adjusted the drag on the reel and that's why the rainbow tossed the lure.

As I moved my way upstream I was having plenty of follows from brown trout of various sizes but they just weren't on the take in this long wide medium clear flowing water. I tried several different hard body lures all with the same result. With the wind now gusting at around 25-30 kph I decided I would by pass the slower flowing stretches of river and just concentrate on the fast water runs. I only had five off them along the 1.5 kms of river I'm fishing and they're pretty well spread out too. It was off with the hard body lure and on with a Mepps #00 black bladed Aglia spinner from here on.

The first fast water gave up one medium sized rainbow and that was the only take I had there, the second short fast water run I picked up a small brown and another reasonably rainbow. I then had a two hundred meter walk to the next three fast water runs that were all close together which was good as it was now getting pretty hot out here in the open. Two of the three fast water runs were productive, I caught and released one rainbow and four small browns in them. I feel I was lucky in catching 8 trout all up today given the conditions weren't suited to trout fishing at all.. Had I been feeling okay this morning when I got up at 6:00 am, it would have been the best time to have hit the river as there wasn't any wind at all plus there would have been some shade on the river too..

Adrian Webb (meppstas)

Beautiful coloured Mersey River brown

Mersey River Brown

Nice Mersey Rainbow

Rainbow trout Mersey River

Mersey River

Rainbow hooked lost here Mersey River