With the weather still being fine I headed back to the Meander River this morning for another spin session. I was much later starting off today after having a doctors appointment & didn't hit the river until 10:45 am. Good thing was the area I fished still had plenty of shade along it for quite some distance. The river level was down by around five inches but still had good flow and running clear and cool. It wasn't all that long when I had a brown have a go at the hard body lure but it missed getting hooked. It was very similar to a trip to the river a couple of days ago when the trout weren't really all that aggressive in the slow/medium runs.
A little further up I had the same thing happen again with two trout doing the same thing. I came to a fast water run and it was here I caught the first brown of the session at 11:10 am, a nice 490 gram fish. A little further on and I caught another two browns before losing the next two fish..With three solid browns caught and released I still wasn't satisfied and wanted more so I decided not to fish on any further here. I headed back to the car and drove to another area on the river where I thought I may add a few more to my tally. Once I arrived there (12:30pm) I found the river was mostly in full sun, I knew I could still manage a fish or two in what shaded areas there were on either side of the river. I wasn't in the river any more than five minutes when I hooked and lost two browns which I wasn't impressed with. A little further up and I had my forth trout of the day on and soon in the net, it was a nice 520 gram fish.
I had a few more follows and spooked several fish as I slowly moved up through a long shallow stretch of river when I came to a deeper fast water run. It was in this run where I caught and released another two medium size browns from five hook ups as well as having several solid hit and misses. I was going to fish on but it required a steep climb up the river bank followed with some solid bush bashing. After being in the river for three and a half hours the lower back & left hip were getting sore so I decided to call it a day. Another half a dozen trout wasn't all that bad, it could have been much better had I not lost so many but that's the way it goes..
Adrian Webb (meppstas)
