Autumn has to be one of my favourite times of the year, no matter where you fish in Australia. The days seem to be calmer with a softer light. With cooler days and that hint of something in the air foretelling a change of season it is a joy to be on the creek. Days are spent enjoying the warmth of 10.30am - 3.30pm before an edge comes into the air temperature, that reminds you summer is gone and the trout season will soon be no longer. Like a kid trying to sneak in just one more go on the swings before dusk, too soon it is time to go home.
So why is Autumn so special? Apart from the character of the weather at this time of year, I am just amazed at how some trout make it through the season. So often they have endured low water, relentless fishing pressure, predators, catchment hazards, and the sheer brutality of drought heat and yet here they are inspired by the first cooling falls of autumnal rain and with summer behind them, driven towards spawning.
Last year I took the picture above on a small South Australian creek that is a feeder stream to a more prominent river. The creek was barely flowing throughout Summer, yet here after the first rains, it almost looked healthy again. I was convinced fish had either died or dropped back to the main river during the 35C plus temperatures that had prevailed through summer, yet as I walked an ant hatch started and very soon I saw a swirl and then another and another. The tenacity of the brown to hang on is amazing. Their adaptation is probably underestimated by us. Just think of the places you know they have been caught or survived in.
I used to fish a village pond in my home village of Holford on the Quantock Moors in Somerset in Southern England. In this pond were the most cagey 6 - 10 inch lean, mean, never to be seen browns. They were stream wise, they lived in a silted up 2 foot deep pond and had worm after worm and fly after fly cast at them. Driven by frustration we even tried to blow them up one well planned morning after raiding our barn for fertilizer, mixing with very fine sugar and making some fuses and a Cash and Carry coffee tin tightly sealed. We never saw any red spotted beauties floating, but we did upset some riders in Butterfly Coombe and scrambled, tripped, laughed and fled up through the bracken before the waters had even finished rocking or the leaves had stopped tumbling from the tree canopy above. The next time we returned, sitting quietly, there they were, taking up position on the fin where the water ran fastest into the pond. How did they survive our ground zero, how did they survive ever the constant attention of every worm dangler in the village?
My point being that just about every trout water sees pressure of one sort or another to varying degrees. Take a look at Arthur’s Lake in Tasmania, what a vast expanse of water, and what a vast head of fish. Yes there would be fish that live their life without seeing a fly, spinner or other, however there would be plenty that are sick to death of the drone of another boat overhead, or a fly tweeked so invitingly past their snout, or a wobbling lure that almost drives them to the fury of snapping at it. Yet this is a vast lake totally opposite to that little muddy village pond, yet similar pressures are relative.
So my love of Autumn fishing is not just about the weather, but as much about admiring any trout that has hung on through summer. These are the fittest fish, the best gene pool that can go on to produce even better specimens in years to come. So roll on Autumn, put us out of our misery of unrelenting hot days so that we may enjoy the last days of the season with our friends the trout.
February 16th, 2008 | General, Blogroll | No comments
