Well, BM (Tim) & his partner Joanne arrived safely on Tuesday morning after sailing over on the Spirit of Tasmania, they called in around 12.30 PM that afternoon. We were organising where to go the following morning and I suggested the Meander River would be best suited for the two of them. With Joanne having her first real spin session in a river I knew a stretch of river that wouldn't be too difficult wading for the first time.
The next morning was very calm and also pretty foggy, the conditions were perfect for river fishing once again. The rivers was at least four inches higher than my last trip here which wasn't going to be a problem any way.
It just meant that Joanne would have to bypass a couple of the fast water runs that's all... As we slowly worked our way upstream there wasn't too many signs of trout to start with until I finally had one come from nowhere and have a whack at the ghost brown hard body just as I went to lift it from the river. Tim was having a follow every now and then but no takers, I also had a few follows and light hit & misses while Joanne was still trying her best to catch a trout. It wasn't until we were around 500 meters upstream when I finally had my first brown take the lure. That fish was hard up against the river bank in a small flat water and it took the lure as soon as it hit the water. It had taken close on an hour and a half before the first trout was caught and landed, it was a nice 450 gram brown.
That was the last fish for another thirty five minutes when I caught another well conditioned 400 gram brown in the fast water. Tim and Joanne were still working hard in trying to draw a trout to their lures but it just wasn't happening at this stage. I was hoping it wouldn't be too long before they picked up a trout or two... We were now fishing in full sun and I continued to fish a narrow fast water run and picked up another two nice browns in quick time. Tim was twenty meters ahead of me and he said he had caught and released a couple of small browns too which was good to hear. Joanne although she hadn't caught a trout in this river yet was still enjoying the experience of trout fishing in this river. Ahead of us was a wide, deep slow flowing stretch of river and we could see several trout on the rise.
Knowing that they were surface feeding we bypassed it and entered the river a little further up and fished on for another seven hundred meters where I caught and released another two medium size browns from four hook ups... Tim tried several different lures and finally went with a grasshopper under a bubble float. He did have a couple of light touches on it, but not one of them snapped up the hopper. It was just on 12:30 PM when we decided to call it a day and have a leisurely 1.5 kilometer walk back to the car.. Even though the trout were on the finicky side today we still enjoyed our time together on the river.
The good thing was Tim did manage a couple of trout and Joanne got to see what it's like to fish in a river for trout in Tasmania and she loved it. Both of them did have a short spin session from the river bank in a small river not far out of Sheffield yesterday afternoon, Tim caught four small browns and Joanne picked up a couple as well.. I know Barra Mick from fishingvictoria site that I'm on and that's how he managed to get in touch with me to head down to Tassie to check out or beautiful state..
Cheers
Adrian Webb (meppstas)