Some say, spin fishing is a kids' thing.
However, in some countries, spin fishing is way more popular than fly fishing, and highly sophisticated.
When recent style jigging was first introduced in NZ, some said, "I know jigging but livebaiting works better." but the jigging we were doing was a new style fishing , and with new style gears, the jigging we were doing has lot more potential than what they had been.
The situation looks very similar for me, cos new style spin fishing uses very thin braids, flourocarbon leaders and new style lures. The new style lure are generally called Minnow lures, so the method is called "Minnowing."
What I found in the last 3 years is, when Minnowing is good, you can catch two to three times more, than with fly fishing gears, but fly fishing probably works more constantly regardless of conditions of the water. In other words, the number of fish you catch in total in a month is probably same.
The guys who I went out with this time are crazy about spin fishing. They are armed with Sims high end waders and jackets, use small stellas and high spec rods plus expensive braids. I'm sort of very serious with spin fishing these day too, so believe or not, my set up is daiwa certate reel, plus a newly imported rod from Japan, 'Smith Trout Spin boron composite' (roughly $700) plus Varivas Squid PE line.
For minnowing , big rivers are normally better, cos the biggest advantage over fly fishing is castability. You can target spots where you normally cannot with fly fishing gears. plus, those spots are sort of untouched spots so you might see some great fish from those spots.
On the day, to be honest fishing was not easy, the water temperature dropped too sharply on the previous day, which is normally the worst thing for minnowing.
However, some trout were still very keen to bite on our lures.
Especially, like this spot, there is no back space to use fly rods, and the best spots are the other side of the river, so ideal for minnowing.
We saw many chases but, on the day, I couldn't finalise them well. That's a very typical reaction from them when water temperature drops. Another typical thing I saw on the day was brownies were more aggressive than rainbow when it's cold.
We probably caught around 15 fish, which is not high number, but was OK on such a clod day. At least we saw a lot of potential from Minnowing method.