FOCUS ON SIZE

“Snagged” was the call from Jeff, who was precariously perched on an upturned bucket in the back corner of the boat.

I instinctively turned off the electric motor, started the Honda and reversed back toward the tangled mass of logs that had snared his lure.

“Hang on,” he said, “it’s come off”.

Jeff continued to whip his lure to the boat as the electric motor hummed back into life and started moving the boat along a well worn path.

The lure wobbled into view where it was given a cursory once over before Jeff flicked it back toward the snag pile he had just hooked up on some five metres below.

The tip of the rod pulsed solidly as his Hammerhead crash dived toward the depths. I glanced forward to make sure our course through the submerged forest was accurate when Jeff bounced up off the bucket to set the hooks in a fish.

“I’m on,” Jeff shouted, “Nothing big though.”

I noticed braid wasn’t coming off the spool yet there was a healthy bend in the rod. The line angled quickly toward the middle of the river where the telltale head sway of a big cod gave away that this was definitely not a small fish.

The fish continued along its arc before straightening up and powering toward the middle of the river. I had already picked that this fish was no ‘pooka’ (‘pooka’ = small fish) and had swung the boat to meet up with the fish in the snag free environ of mid river.

Line was now freely pouring off the reel and Jeff was battling a massive cod. Adrenalin flowed as a gaping mouth and beady eye poked clear of the water some metres away and we saw the bulk of old warrior of the Murrumbidgee.

More minutes passed and we were able to keep the fish away from the snags. The fish surfaced and we held our breath as it inched into the environet.

At 126cm and estimated 80lb (the 60lb boga’s bottomed out before the net + cod even got close to lifting off the deck) this was a truly a great fish.

A recount of events such as I have just told may be commonplace in the mid to lower Murray River where metre plus cod are prevalent, however in the mid-section  of the Murrumbidgee River, we have a plethora of cod up to 60cm, and anything above this size is a rarity. The big fish are there (but not in the numbers present in other waterways), and to try to regularly hook and land these fish is a difficult task.

Tips for bigger fish

If you want to regularly catch big fish, the one tried and true method is to troll big lures in the deepest snaggiest water (usually pooled water) you can find. There are

many variations to this rule and there are massive fish that live in very shallow water, but for a start you should think about where cod prefer to live.

Big cod like big red gum snags. The older and more decayed the better. Crusty old snags with hollows and no small limbs remaining are the perfect environ for a cod house (and also a prime breeding site in spring).

Use your sounder to locate submerged timber in deep holes on river bends and also look for the tips of the roots which usually protrude clear of the water nearer the bank. The trunk of the snag will either be perpendicular to the bank or facing slightly downstream where the current has pushed it over many decades.

Whether you like to troll or cast, it’s these big logs that you need to target. Your lure needs to be running within a metre of the snag for a fish to consider chasing it. Murray cod are a lazy fish and generally won’t go far from home to eat. Your lure must be within that one metre range or you are wasting your time.

To run your lure a metre off the bottom in two metres of water is easy – you only need to be a metre down and you are in the zone, but if you are fishing a weir pool and the depth is varying from five to ten metres, you need specialist lures and precise rod work to be able to follow the bottom contour and hold the lure in that vital one metre zone.

Two of my favourite lures capable of plumbing the depths of the deeper weir pools are the 90mm AC Invader and the medium/large Custom Crafted Hammerhead. Both these lure types come in two bib sizes, and for fishing water over five metres you need the larger bibs.

I have found that when fishing 30lb braid and two metres of 40lb leader that these lures will dive easily down to ten metres. The flagship lure in the AC range, the 150mm Invader, is more buoyant than its smaller 90mm stablemate and will need more speed to get it toward similar depths, but this lure puts out so much vibration that the big green fish find them hard to resist.

If you prefer spinnerbaits or chatterbaits, the depth you can fish is only limited by your imagination, but trying to drive one of these lures through a pile of timber some ten metres below requires great ‘feel’ and isn’t a technique that novice fisherman find easy. No doubting the effectiveness of these lures for large cod with big quadspins, massive chatters and oversized colorado blades offered through the “Mudguts Spinnerbaits” range giving a lure profile that make it a worthwhile meal for a hungry cod.

When you are casting to snags, always start fishing on the upstream side of the log. Fish face upstream and to have the lure swimming in front of its eyes is a better presentation than bringing the lure behind the fish and trying to get it to turn around. At worst an errant cast will spook the fish and ruin the snag completely.

When you are thinking big, you must prepare yourself for a hard days fishing. Big fish never come easily and many days can come between big fish bites. You just have to keep persisting with either multiple trolling passes along a suitable bend (measured in hours) or dozens of casts per angler at each spot.

Persist, Persist, Persist

July is typically the toughest month of the year for native fish and with limited water to fish in the drought conditions, I concentrated my efforts on a long, deep bend with about twenty huge snags on it.

Over a three day trip, each of these logs got hammered by four anglers with literally hundreds of casts. A few small fish came up, before late on the third day we finally wore through the patience of one of the residents and a 90cm cod nabbed a spinnerbait. This is a prime example of how much effort needs to be put in.

The ability to recognise snags where a big fish may be in residence is a relatively simple process. Basically any big piece of red gum laying into enough water so that the fish’s back won’t stick out of the water will hold a decent cod, but the old trees that fall into deep holes from years of erosion by the current hold the biggest fish.

The snags where big fish live stand proud when you have one of those rare days when cod are pulled from every snag.

Fishing at Hay in March 08 with Dave Carter and Chris Webber we landed forty three cod in a single day and had bites off almost very log we fished. The water was barely deep enough to float the boat, but where we found logs in a metre or two of water, we caught cod.

What we did notice throughout this busy day, was that when we found a three or four metre hole with massive snags and the whole area screaming fish, that we couldn’t get a bite.

There were half a dozen spots through the day where the lack of bites was distinctively noticeable, yet after churning the water to foam for far longer than any other spot, we failed to raise a scale from one of these cod condominiums.

I believe that these locations are home to the giants of the river and they protect their homes from other cod with lethal force. These locations are to be remembered and fished as often as possible so that one day when your luck is up, the big boy will be hungry and you’ll get a shot at the cod father.

Whilst this trip to Hay was probably the most noticeable example of where the big fish lived, it also pays to note where you do and don’t catch fish in your local waterway.

I have a bend I regularly fish with clients and catch fish all along it, with the exception of a short, snaggy section at the downstream corner. I have fished this little piece of water for over fifteen years and had never even had a bite, yet the sounder and my intuition tells me that this should be the hottest location on the bend. Yet after coming up fishless for so long, I assumed it must be a ‘dead zone’ in the river.

How wrong I was.

My hammerhead wriggled up and over the first log in the pile. I know every crevice in the logs and knew that my lure would bump through without snagging as it had fruitlessly done so often.

I was looking upstream to make sure I had my trolling path correct and telling a story to my client (as fishing guides do) as my lure passed through water in which I had no faith. Even though my mind was elsewhere and I wasn’t expecting a bite, I jumped back to reality when I felt the jaws of a fish snap shut on the leader as the fish had inhaled the lure completely.

Instinctively I gave the rod a short, sharp whack to set the hooks and the old silverback cod realised something wasn’t right and poured on the power. We got a close look at this enormous fish (estimated 130-140cm) some 30 minutes later, and after evading a brief encounter with the net, the fish popped the leader after burrowing back into his snag pile.

This massive cod was obviously king of the river and made sure that no other fish invaded his space. The fact that it had taken me the best part of fifteen years to even get this beast to bite shows how patient a cod can be. As fisherman, if we are to be successful in hunting these leviathans than we must exhibit similar patience.

Take notice of the small things

Its one thing to know where to find these great fish, and another to fool them into eating your lure. There are also a few little things that can also make the difference between photographing the fish of a lifetime and yet another story of a fish that got away.

It goes without saying that you should tie good knots, use sensible braid and leader, and have razor sharp hooks. Hooks are your only link to the fish and its worth making sure that they are touched up with a file or better still retrofit your lures with quality hooks such as ‘Owner’. Owner’s aren’t the type of hook you want your kids to play with, as they bite through anything (human skin is not an effective barrier) and hold strongly, but they are a hook that lands more fish.

When you hook up to a big fish, it pays to manoeuvre the boat toward mid river where there are less snags for the fish to dive under. Most cod will come up and have a look at you when hooked, and if the boat drifts toward the bank, it’s likely that the fish will take the opportunity and swim under a nearby log and pop the line. If you keep the boat in open water, this brings the fish toward you and away from trouble. Again it’s a small thing to think about, but it can save a bust-off. 

The Way Forward

As a fisherman and fishing guide, I believe the changes in 2007 to the NSW rules and regulations are the biggest step forward since the re-introduction of the fishing licence. The abolition of set lines protects the bigger fish somewhat, whilst the increase in the Murray cod legal length from 50cm to 55cm (and to 60cm in December 2008), effectively allows cod a chance to mature and get a season or two of breeding before they are taken for the table.

Under the old regulations, there were too few fish growing to breeding size in many areas which limited genetic diversity and could ultimately result in fish pairing up that may not have produced the strongest offspring. This can also be said of hatchery fish where brood stock paired together may not have selected each other in the wild as the strongest and best mate. With more mature fish in the wild, when conditions are right, you have fish laying eggs in numbers that would be difficult to reproduce artificially. In addition, these fish should be of stronger genetic stock.

I am already noticing an increase in the average size of fish, so in another season or two, the average fish (even in hard fished waterways) should be around 55-59cm, which is about the size that cod start to give a reasonable account of themselves and are excellent lure prospects.

Freshwater fishing for Murray cod is only going to get better.

© Jamin Forbes September 2008