Yorky

We're currently waiting for the 2021 Caldia LT's to show up, they've been on order for a while, think it's this month they should get here.
I've been toying with the idea of the 1000 Caldia as an upgrade to my Yellowfin luring outfit but then that would mean I'd have to get a new rod as well 
🤔 new rod & reel, angry wife 🤬, peace & quiet after initial explosion👍,  could be a done deal 😂
Yorky

The Meander River water level had dropped to a safer wading level, so that's where I headed. Even though it was higher than I would have liked I knew an area I could wade as long as I took it easy. Not the session I wanted but still managed a few hits from the trout. The water temperature is still very low and the flow was on the fast side, the fishing will improve as the water level drops to the 60 cm mark. It still nice to finally get into one of the larger river for a change of scenery.. Thanks for watching..
** Since this tip we've had a heap of rain and the rivers are all running high again... snow down to 200 mtrs is forecast overnight as well..😪
cheers
Adrian
 

This trip was on the 11-9-21
I finally had a reasonable spin session today before the weather turned sour as well as taking a plunge in the water. 10 trout caught & released from 11 hook ups, all taken on the Mepps #00 gold Aglia Mouche Noire & gold Aglia Mouche Rouge inline spinners. I certainly gave the new Okuma ITX-1000 reel a good workout during my three hours in the water too, it did it's job to perfection. As soon as I caught the first trout on the first cast I knew I was in for a good spin session. On the walk back to the car I decided to give one more stretch of water a go, big mistake that was. As I made my way up in waist deep water I trip on a submerged log, Yep!! I took the plunge in the drink, drowned another camera (my third now) too.. Thank you my brain was engaged and I pulled it from the inside of my waders in quick time, it was wet and went a little hay wire when I turned it on. I rushed back to the car and dried it off with the car heater, it's back in good working order again.. Not only that, while heading back to the car I took the camera battery & memory card out to dry them off. After walking some 40 yards or so I couldn't find the memory card, I had dropped it somewhere. I back tracked and was lucky enough to spot it in the grass.. Was it luck or pure arse that I found it, I didn't really care, all that mattered was I found it, plus it had all of the mornings spin session on it as well as 2,600 other photos.. It was still a top few hours spent chasing trout anyway even with the little mishap.. cheers Adrian  
 

See the youtube link below from Yamashita regarding Squid jig rattle. The video is in Japanese but has subtitles. 
Most of my jigs are Yamashita's as I like the quality & the technology that goes into the build.
I mainly use the rattle jigs when I first get to a spot for a short period then switch over to a non rattle jig unless the water is dirty then I will use the rattle jig pretty much for the session, I'm also a fan of their warm jacket technology.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xvOVuu_-nZ4
Yorky

See the youtube link below from Yamashita regarding Squid jig rattle. The video is in Japanese but has subtitles. 
Most of my jigs are Yamashita's as I like the quality & the technology that goes into the build.
I mainly use the rattle jigs when I first get to a spot for a short period then switch over to a non rattle jig unless the water is dirty then I will use the rattle jig pretty much for the session, I'm also a fan of their warm jacket technology.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xvOVuu_-nZ4
Yorky

With weather like today, how can you not go fishing. Was able to head for the hills this morning. Wasn't really fussed if I caught anything or not, happy to be outside in some sun.

 

Caught these two guys on a black and orange nymph. Tied half a dozen last night. Come home with two. Only using 2lb tippet. 

When I came across this guy, I knew for certain the hills where waking up.. 

Some ruff stuff. That gets the job done. Carry bunch of woolys and drys too 
 
 
 

I normally wait until spring for the first trout fish. After reading @styla report, thought I'd give it a crack myself. 
Expecting alot of water. Forecast only 11 degrees and the odd shower. 

Spotted and spooked a few fish before my first. All juveniles. This guy fell to a simple grub pattern. 

Another sitting in the fast wash 

Glad I got out and had a look. will wait until it warms up a little and flow slows before I try again.

Give the man a cigar 👍.
We hear a lot of comments from people in the shop regarding the best scents be it gels or sprays & which one is best. We don't have one in the shop that someone doesn't buy because according to someone they all work.
People have their favourites and a lot of these people are buying it to fish the same areas for the same species but one will tell you a certain scent doesn't work and the next person will tell you that that scent is the only one that works. From what I hear from a lot of different people is that they all work just not for everyone.
The only way to truly find out which one works for you is to try them, when you get one that is working and is the best scent there is, stick to it, if it stops working, try another, but don't throw away the one that wasn't working cause you may just come back to it as the best there is.
Yorky

Give the man a cigar 👍.
We hear a lot of comments from people in the shop regarding the best scents be it gels or sprays & which one is best. We don't have one in the shop that someone doesn't buy because according to someone they all work.
People have their favourites and a lot of these people are buying it to fish the same areas for the same species but one will tell you a certain scent doesn't work and the next person will tell you that that scent is the only one that works. From what I hear from a lot of different people is that they all work just not for everyone.
The only way to truly find out which one works for you is to try them, when you get one that is working and is the best scent there is, stick to it, if it stops working, try another, but don't throw away the one that wasn't working cause you may just come back to it as the best there is.
Yorky

Give the man a cigar 👍.
We hear a lot of comments from people in the shop regarding the best scents be it gels or sprays & which one is best. We don't have one in the shop that someone doesn't buy because according to someone they all work.
People have their favourites and a lot of these people are buying it to fish the same areas for the same species but one will tell you a certain scent doesn't work and the next person will tell you that that scent is the only one that works. From what I hear from a lot of different people is that they all work just not for everyone.
The only way to truly find out which one works for you is to try them, when you get one that is working and is the best scent there is, stick to it, if it stops working, try another, but don't throw away the one that wasn't working cause you may just come back to it as the best there is.
Yorky

Give the man a cigar 👍.
We hear a lot of comments from people in the shop regarding the best scents be it gels or sprays & which one is best. We don't have one in the shop that someone doesn't buy because according to someone they all work.
People have their favourites and a lot of these people are buying it to fish the same areas for the same species but one will tell you a certain scent doesn't work and the next person will tell you that that scent is the only one that works. From what I hear from a lot of different people is that they all work just not for everyone.
The only way to truly find out which one works for you is to try them, when you get one that is working and is the best scent there is, stick to it, if it stops working, try another, but don't throw away the one that wasn't working cause you may just come back to it as the best there is.
Yorky

I'm still out of action and yet to wet a line for the new trout season (12 days ago) so here's another of my end of 2020/21 season spin sessions..
It was a reasonably good day in the river too with quite a few trout caught & released..
cheers
Adrian..
 

Umm totally different scenario but let's flesh this out. I really doubt anyone is dropping $300 on a tiny finesse reel to load it with 10lb power pro, I imagine however it would hold a full 150yard spool of a quality 8 carrier 4 to 6lb braid with room for backing ,  also in this example even with the 10lb power pro spooled you are working the reel at 100% of it's potential rather than giving it an artificially reduced capacity by using a gimmicky shallow spool. If you get done you get done  but it won't be because you opted to reduce the maximum line capacity of your chosen reel. So long story short no, no it doesn't apply.

Yeah after re-spooling 3 reels in a row, I start getting jealous of shallow spools. But that Jealousy fades at about the same rate, as it takes for my forearm to stop aching😉

Then the versatility, and safety net of having a couple of hundred meters, is more suited to the way I fish.

They have their place - but its not at my place😉

 

I like shallow spool reels, but most of my fishing is finese or squid. Even with a shallow spool reel I fit 150m to 200m of braid, as it's mainly 6lb or maybe 8lb, except for 12lb for squid. I just prefer not to have backing line. And I'm not worried that YFW is going to spool me.

Seeing as the trout season opened last Saturday & I haven't been able to go since it opened due to being laid up in bed with lower back problems I thought
I'd find a video of one of my better spin sessions last April.. 
cheers
Adrian
 

This trip was on the last day of March, chasing trout in my favorite tannin stream on private property, how lucky am I to have it all to myself..
Not long to go now before I'm back in a river, trout season opens on the 7th August..
cheers
Adrian
 

This trip was back on the 7th March 2021, it's to a long stretch of fast/medium flowing water on the upper Mersey River in the Mole Creek area above the Union Bridge. I was told by several trout fishers that there weren't any trout to be seen in the area and that they had wasted their time fishing there. For me that was a challenge, surely there had to be a few trout in this stretch of river. I knew the trout had dropped off after the 2016 record floods and the influx of cormorants didn't help either, there should be some trout back in the area by now. This long stretch of water is wide open which makes the trout easy prey for cormorants, anyway I gave it a go...
cheers
Adrian
 

The Fonz got nothing on me. On fly. One of many, but probably the biggest. Amazing fun.

This was a day (19th March 2021) when I was lucky enough to be in the Mersey River when there was a massive Mayfly hatch, the trout were having a great time sipping them off the surface. This was the best hatch I've seen on this river since 2009 when I was lucky enough to see a monster Dun hatch in the stretch of river..(see photo)
The trout fishing was tough going due them feeding on the Mayflys.. Actually seeing what I did was the highlight of the day for sure, the trout I caught were a bonus..

Massive dun hatch, Mersey River. Weegena. (25-11-09) 
cheers
Adrian
 
 

With the trout season closed until the 7th August I thought I'd put a few of my 2020/21 trout fishing videos on the site from time to time...
Hope you enjoy it, feel free to hit the like button as well.. thanks..
cheers
Adrian..
 

I always use fresh tenderized squid with a little bit of pilchard on my baits, the frozen squid doesnt work as well as fresh... My theory is the pilchard brings them to the bait, the squid hooks them as it stays on the hook better.. If they are fussy and I have a KGW/trevally. Then I use a little bit of that  instead.. I dont boat fish.. Only off the land which is a bit harder to get KGW.. Its been hard this year due to the crowds everywhere... Hoping/wishing next summer is better.. crowd wise... 
Last few trips I havnt really fished as much due to the crowds... 
We went to Gleesons landing over the Adelaide cup weekend.... My god.. Rundle mall all weekend.. I didnt really fish... too noisy, too many people... 
I know the local cray guys and they let me squeeze in and camp next to them.. ALL the other camping spots were full. I counted 27 cars/vans/campers jut at one clearing...
I managed to go out on one of the cray guys boats for the day.. For my efforts I was rewarded with a small cray... By the way.. This year the cray guys have been doing really well as the pro isnt going out and catching them this season.. They have been getting their bag limit every day... 

Spent the weekend at Edithburgh. Apparently the plastered pilchard (pseudo bent minnow) works ludicrously well:



Yep even a squid took the lure. Total for the was 10 snook, best 56cm, 10 salmon best 40cm, and 1 squid (more on the trad lures). Taking orders lol!

Yeah I tried a whole heap of different hitches when I was having issues - Rizzuto, Grannies, even a thin smear of super glue etc and they all held better than standard. But when I switched my braid - I noticed it had way more grip so I went back to standard alternating hitches and didnt have a problem with them coming undone again.

I do have an FG I tied a year ago on a bait caster, I use it for casting practice in the back yard, and that has lost a few standard hitches but its still hanging on after over 1000 casts.

As a "hang over" from my light tackle breaming days  - I usually retie my leaders before every session - so I have fresh knots and leaders with no knicks in them.

Its been so long since unraveling hitches has been an issue,  I no longer even think it will happen.

If I needed my knots to last a whole season, I would definitely be using more intricate hitches - but as it stands - my standard hitches do what I ask of them