Freshwater Trout Fishing: Eucumbene Lake & River - Day 2

pictured: Tenryu Lunakia and Gan Craft Ayrton (Jya Ayu)

Day 2 - Trolling up a Trout Storm

After the fantastic signs mid afternoon on Day 1, we were able to confidently bypass the freezing cold morning, sleep in, and slowly setup for another afternoon session of trolling the banks between Anglers Reach and Providence Portal.

For our most successful lures we rigged up the Tenryu Lunakia / Daiwa Sol combo's with 8lb Seaguar BattleEgi Fluoro Leader. The Lunakia's provide a perfect balance of stiffness, lightness, finesse and bottom end power for trout fishing. They maintained a super refined feel to each lure vibe or fish motion whilst providing the capability of landing decent sized fish.

We started the day with a similar spread as per the end of Day 1 but with our drags dialled right back after the recommendations received by our friendly caravan park neighbour.

Initially we changed out the Tackle House Jointed Bitstream for an Ever Green Combat Crank 400 to try and cover more depth however that proved difficult in terms of finding a suitable depth that worked for the entire spread, so we quickly opted for a Gan Craft Ayrton in Jya Ayu instead. Furthermore, after the old man's faithful tazzie devil proved unsuccessful we opted for a Little Jack Forma Cute in Shrimp, so our main spread generally looked something like the following with 3 fishers aboard:

• Short corners: 2 x Ever Green Little Max 1/4 ounce blade (in Black Knight and Prespawn Dynamite)
• Long corners: Gan Craft Ayrton in Jya Ayu & Little Jack Forma Cute in Shrimp
• Shotgun: Tackle House Elfin Mini Cicada
  
  

Obviously we could’ve just ran dark blades all day but it wasn’t the point of the trip, we wanted to try out various lure types and enjoy finding various depths, colours and styles that the trout couldn't resist. Furthermore, given the abundance of strikes we were achieving it would’ve been far too lazy and easy if we just stuck with the same lures.

Following the advice of dialing back the drags, we definitely found our strike rate had improved substantially, with our ratio increasing to approx 2 captures per 5 every strikes. And in terms of lure type the black knight absolutely smashed it and was clearly a fish favourite, particularly for brown trout with the biggest going approx 2lb.

We stayed on the water for roughly 3 hours and finished up with a brief session of bait fishing and casting into the shallows. Earlier in the day we'd trolled through a small sheltered bay where we'd seen a lot of surface activity, presumably rainbows feeding off the surface. The old man was committed to his worm under a float and it wasn't long before the float disappeared beside a snag and a decent rainbow trout of roughly 2lb came charging out of the water.

Definitely another successful day for the memory bank.