covered rat. The Mud Eye “Thingy” comes
with eyes and a tail and is a very effective big
cod lure. Cod love chomping on rats, it seems.
In the rivers smaller deep diving hard-bodies
like the medium Stump Jumper or the
Downunder Boomerang work well, but there
are literally hundreds of hard-bodied cod lures
out there so it pays to get local advice. I have
found an improved hook up rate by using
double split rings and large hooks like Owner
ST56 patterns. Big cod have very powerful jaws
that require solid terminals but they aren’t
nearly as destructive on hooks as barra. When
trolling hard-bodies it’s important to keep the
lure banging into the bottom at all times and
carry a range of lures that cover depths from
four to 12m. This often requires you to let a
fair bit of line out to get the lure into the deeper
depths at a slow trolling speed.Surface
The most exciting way to catch cod is on
surface lures. The bite is a huge suck that puts
a barra boof to shame. One moment there’s a
lure paddling across the surface, the next
there’s a huge hole as the cod sucks in a bucket
full of water and the lure. Despite this ferocity
of attack, the lure often misses its target- if you hook 50 per cent of the bites you get
on surface lures you are doing well. The best
surface lures are paddlers and walkers rather
than traditional poppers. My favourites are
Taylor Made, Jointed Jitterbugs and the
Jackall Pompadore. In the rivers surface lure
fishing works best at night and the fish often
explode on the lure at your feet, which can be
a bit of a heart starter even for the most
hardened cod angler.
Cod are very fickle creatures when it
comes to the conditions they actively feed in.
They can be infuriating bastards which shut
down for no apparent reason. In the big
dams like Copeton and Pindari the key
seems to be a long period of stable water
levels. When the dam is dropping fast as the
water is ripped out for irrigation, the bite
slows down. Rapidly rising dam levels after
f loods can see a lot of cold water enter the
dam and the fish similarly shut down. Low
barometric pressure and slowly dropping
barometers are also a turn off for these fickle
fish. The best fishing times are dawn, dusk,
moon rise, moon overhead and well into the
night, but when conditions are good we’ve
caught them all through the day.
In the rivers the key seems to be to have
stable weather and a steady river level. At times
these silly fish will drive you to complete
distraction by their feeding behaviour.
Last winter in zero degree temperature in the
pre-dawn mist the large Copeton cods had a
great surface bite in the shallows of the damwhen the edges were crusted in ice. Dozens
of metre cod were caught in the freezing
conditions. I have no idea why the fish were
active or what they were feeding on as all other
forms of life seemed to be tucked away out of
the cold.
On a recent trip I caught a nice cod on my
third cast then didn’t get a bite for the next
2000 plus casts. This was probably due to a
rapidly dropping dam level. As you can tell,
they can be infuriating fish. If you see and hear
an angler screaming at the lake and throwing
rocks at cod snags, just walk slowly by. It is just
a phase we all go through when the conditions
aren’t right for the bite.Tackle
As far as rods and reels go, a big cod is a
bullocky fighter without too much stamina.
On the fish scale of fighting ability I’d rate
them at a 3 (with a barra being 7). While you
do get buried in snags at times, in general they
are an easy fish to land considering their size.
Standard barra gear is fine with a typical outfit
being a good baitcaster on a medium 6-8 kilo
rod and 10 or 15 kilo braid. Leader needs to be
hard and abrasion resistant. For big fish I use
hard 50lb f luorocarbon as the fine teeth can
fray soft leader quite easily.
The main thing I’ve learnt about cod is that
persistence pays. They live in some of the most
beautiful country in Australia. Camping on a
river bank or the shore of a dam is a great way
to spend a few days targeting cod. While our
group has caught quite a few cod up to 120cm
and plenty over a metre long, we are used to
blue marlin fishing where one or two bites a
day is reasonable fishing. Cod fishing is very
similar. The rewards come when you just keep
on casting and trolling for 12 to 16 hours a day
and stay focused on the prize.58 | fishingworld.com.au | March 2015
ABOVE: Topwater luring for cod
is fantastic fun with enormous
surface explosions.
Big fish like this deserve to be
released and caught again by
another lucky fisho.INLAND NATIVES
od are very fickle creatures when it comes to the
conditions they actively feed in. They can be infuriating
bastards which shut down for no apparent reason.”
C