I headed on back to fish the dark tannin waters of the Leven River again yesterday.. The river was at the perfect wading height & the weather was spot on, overcast & humid conditions. It was another slow start once again with just the one soft hit on the gold Mepps #1 black fury from a solid brown. It had taken close on twenty minutes when the brown followed the gold black fury from a cast and drift from the opposite side of the river.

I could see the silhouette of a large fish following closely behind the spinner as I let it drift with the flow. I gave the rod a couple of twitches to see if it would get the trout to take the lure. That didn't work until I had the lure and the trout within three meters of me when I gave the lure another light twitch then let the black fury drop which made the gold blade flutter. That did the job the trout took the lure side on, I felt weight on the line as the large brown took hold of the spinner, I quickly raised the rod to set the hooks but missed setting them. For one reason or another it hadn't taken full hold of the black fury, it must have just had the tip of the hook on it's outer lip. All that fish did was give a soft head shake and it was gone.

I had missed a trout that would have been well over a kilo, not the start I was hoping for at all especially when it was the first trout seen for the session. After the missed chance of catching that brown I moved into a long shallow fast water, it was time to change to the light weight #00 Aglia gold blade spinner, the lure that's been working well in shallow tannin waters.

After an hour & a half in the river I caught my first brown trout of the morning, after it's release I caught another seven in a row, a total of eight brown trout caught & released over a mere twenty meters of fast water. Then nothing for another thirty minutes, that's when I decided it was time for a move to another area on the river. I was going to head downstream to a nice wide medium flowing stretch of river, once back at the car I changed my mind and headed to another fast water run a kilometre further up from where I had just fished.

It was a poor decision to head up there because I only caught one small brown from three hook ups, those trout were all within five meters of each other. I fished on for another forty five minutes without a sign of a trout, the time had come to call it a day..Nine trout for the session was reasonable but also very disappointing, I was expecting more trout to be in the upper reaches at this time of the season. Still, that's just part of the ups and downs one has when trout fishing..

Adrian Webb (meppstas)

Best brown caught

Another trout taken here

First of the day

Glassy conditions

Small brown caught here