Stocked trout

[Aussie_fisher]

In tassie atm and did a very interesting kind of fishing yesterday. there’s this private campsite run by this bloke which also has a private dam stocked with massive rainbow and brown trout which you can pay $50 per person to fish (catch n release) 60cm+ models were everywhere. Now their main diet is these pellets except for maybe the occasional bug which falls into the dam. I didn’t have gear so he lent the gear. So I did fishing on a spin rod with a small hook at the end and on that hook a normal pellet was pre glued by that bloke (you can’t put a pellet on the hook the same way you would other baits because it will crumble). Now each of those pellet hook combinations was $2 so we only bought 10 because it was quite expensive. In some way it was basically a lure now because if your glued pellet comes off the hook or something you lose the entire thing and have to re tie a new “pellet lure” on. The trick was to throw a bunch of pellets in and then when the trout get into a frenzy cast out into the bust ups. Now something interesting I noticed was when you first cast out your ‘pellet lure’ the trout would try to take it. But after two or three casts with it the trout would just stop taking it but they would keep vigorously busting up on the burley pellets you threw in. So I compared the ‘pellet lure’ that had been used a few times compared to a new one. I noticed it had become slightly soggier and the colour changed from dark to light brown because even though it is glued onto a hook and costs the price of a real lure it is still ultimately a normal pellet. As these trout have been fed pellets their whole life and been fished for using them they could tell that this pellet lure had been used a few times and was probably someone’s bait rather than burley. So technically each $2 “pellet lure” only lasted one or two casts in terms of its effectiveness, so we kept re tying a new one on every few casts and when the pellet lure was fresh it would instantly get bites and 2 casts later the fish would just ignore it. since each was so expensive we didn’t do too much fishing because we knew casting each “pellet lure” over and over too many times was just a waste of time. Hooked onto massive trout probably 50cm+ atleast a few times but because the hook was barbless and tiny they came off more times then I can count which was so frustrating it drove me mad. Managed to land 2 small brown trout though around 30cm. What I noticed from this was fish are more intelligent than a lot of us give them credit for and sometimes if you aren’t catching fish it’s not that they aren’t there or not hungry it may be your lure, technique or something else which is off because little things matter. The fishos also fishing the dam were making the same mistake as me initially re using a pellet over and over and when I told them about my potential theory they tried it out and instantly hooked on by putting a new ‘pellet lure’ which validated my theory. Fly and lure fishing were also options but all the people I spoke to around the campsite who fished using them said it’s useless as the trout only like pellets because it’s their breakfast lunch and tea. Sorry for the long report. Cheers

[bessell1955]

Some interesting observations.