His Majesty
January 10, 2025Finally Trout!
Text and photographs by Marco Altamura
Time passes quickly and this Mountain Trout Fishing Opening is also coming up.
This year I want to tackle the creek withequipment suitable for light spinning: the rod is a "two-piece" mt 2.40 with an effective casting power of gr 3/12 combined with a size 3000 reel loaded with a 0.12 mm thick super braided line of fluorescent green high-visibility color to be able to visually follow the trajectories of our lures.
On the reel
The choice falls on the Asso 8XPE Light Games, a very soft and "silky" braid suitable for this particular type of spinning; it is an 8-ply braid composed of ultra-thin high-density PE fibers that are extremely resistant to abrasion and at the same time very soft; the surface is perfectly round and provides incredible smoothness between the rings.
The terminal
As a terminal a piece of about one meter of Asso Premium, a fluorocarbon of the latest generation that is very abrasion-resistant, tough and practically invisible in the water, 0.20 mm thick.
The artificial
As artificial lures three categories of baits all extremely effective: small minnows with neutral and sinking setups, rotating spoons up to gr 9 with paddle inserted directly on the shaft, and small silicon shad mounted on jig-heads of maximum gr 5.
This combo is suitable for both small mountain streams and valley bottom streams having, in this case, the caution to go up with the thickness of the terminal.
Using small artificials, it will be useful to connect them to the terminal with a bowline knot, omitting the use of metal hardware that would affect their proper action in the water.
In addition to the equipment described above, a rubber-mesh wading net and, above all, two good legs for long ascents among large boulders and rough terrain of all kinds will be useful.
Given a choice, I prefer to do "my" opening on the following Monday focusing the fishing action in the middle hours of the day when the waters benefit from the warmth of the sun and there is less competition on the banks.
As the season progresses, I will tackle the big creeks and rivers of the valley floor in search of large marbled and lake trout rising with quite different equipment, but that is another story.
We will talk about that.
