Great Finish to the 2013-2014 Trout Season 27/4/2014
What a great day it was for the last day of the 2013-14 Trout Season with clear skies and hardly a breath of wind. Certainly glad it was the reverse of yesterdays gale force winds and freezing conditions and 9 degrees. I decided to head on back to the Dasher River for the last day as it fished fairly well two days ago and had a reasonable amount of water flow to it.
I headed to a stretch of the Dasher that I haven't fished for two seasons because of very low water levels and the influx of cormorants on it. By going here I can fish up to three kilometers of river if I wish to do so, plus it has some very good runs along it too. I arrived there around 10.30 am and walked for close on ¾ of a kilometer downstream to where I had to battle through the black berry bushes to reach the river. This area had certainly changed from my last trips here that's for sure. Black berry bushes are really spreading along many of rivers in the bush now days and are really out of control. I can't believe that nothing is being done to try and remove or poison them off by landowners, councils and the state government.
Finally I was in the river and working a nice shallow run and instantly had a hook up on the little Mepps black fury gold. Well it didn't last long as I lost it at the rivers edge as I tried to slide it onto the river bank. I decided not to take the landing net again today being a small river most times it's just as easy to bring the fish to the river bank. Works most of the time especially when they are well hooked. I wasn't too fussed about losing that trout as it was a good having a hook up so early in the session. Hopefully it's a sign of things to come! Well it was, as the next small couple of runs I did manage two more hook ups but they both tossed the spinner. Now that's three losses in a row and this was bringing back memories of the last day of the 2012-13 season when I went hope with a big fat "'Donut'" after a four hour session in the Mersey River at Merseylea.
Now this was a brand new spinner that I had on and so I couldn't blame the lure that's for sure, but I wasn't feeling confident with it. I really hate breaking new spinners in and even more so on the last day of the season. I pulled the lure box out of my vest and went through the other gold black fury's that I had in it and found a well used one. Changed over to that spinner straight away and put the new one back in the box. I will break it in properly at the start of next season . I had now covered a couple of hundred meters of river for just the three hook ups and knowing it's all going to turn around soon as it normally does in this great little river..
Well it did turn around, over the next few hundred meters with a variety of fast and medium flowing stretches of river I had caught and released eight browns from nine hook ups. The majority of these browns were well above the normal size for this little river too with the best fish going 530gms. The change of lure even though it was identical to the new one that I replaced seemed to do the trick. The further I worked my way up the river the better the fishing became as I caught another eleven browns from fourteen hook ups making it a "" Great Finish To The 2013-14 Trout Season.'" After fishing just on a kilometer of river I finished up catching and releasing nineteen solid above average browns from twenty six hook ups. This took my season tally to 397 trout in 65 trips for the 2013-14 season which was 27 more than my previous seasons total in 75 trips.
I will over the next few days go through all of my reports and write up on how each river fared and how many brown and rainbows were taken from those rivers that I fished and put it all together into one full season report.
Cheers
Adrian
