As I stumbled into a tackle shop on the outskirts of Melbourne the conversation, as in inevitably does, quickly turned to catching cod.
As I swapped war stories with the teenage attendant, he quickly narrowed his gaze on a nearby freshwater fishing magazine and asked me one of the most common, yet hard to answer, cod questions.
How do I catch more river cod off the top?
Firstly, that’s an extraordinarily broad question as our sunburnt country plays host to a number of different river systems, each with their own distinguishable characteristics From the deep, wide meandering flow of the Murray to the shallow, relatively quick pace of the Goulburn river in north east Victoria.
As a result my first task was to drill down and find out the exact type of water he was fishing to see if I had experienced such conditions. Luckily, he was angling water I had fished countless times before – skinny, pooled water with a walking-pace flow.
With this info in my pocket I was able to chat to the receptive lad about my experience in such a system. I didn’t want to drown him in hyperbole so I kept it simple and offered him the best bit of advice I received when starting my surface apprenticeship.
Your time on the water is precious, so invest it intelligently. I recommended that the next few times he was on the water to concentrate his low-light surface casts in the prime hunting areas at the top of pools and around shallow flowing rapids. Mentioning not to totally disregard other areas, but rather invest greater energy in these surface ‘hot spots’.
The reason being that with history as a yardstick, these parts have accounted for more, and bigger, Murray cod than any other areas during low light periods. We have found that fish don’t sit in these shallow, often under three feet deep, spots under the glare of the midday sun.
However, as the shadows lengthen they move, with darkness as their cloak, into prime, shallow feeding zones looking to snare a home delivered meal.
