As we broke free from our swags, rain began spitting at us like God had blown a gasket. The clouds were gun barrel grey, surrounding us with the menacing intent of a street gang ready to rumble.
If you were reading from a Murray cod manual these dark, overcast conditions would be just the ticket to tame a topwater goodoo.
However, even in conditions that just screamed surface fishing, we fought the urge to run a ‘topwater only’ spread.
With first call for the morning, Hilly strapped on a Jackall Mega Pompadour surface bait, meaning I opted for a subsurface Jackall Gantarel, retrofitted with heavier BKK Fangs trebles.
With the odds stacked in Hillys favour, it wasn’t long before a chorus of boofs rang out over the river and under his surface bait.
Usually, it would only take a Cod to breathe on Hilly’s surface bait before I busted out the topwater tools, but on this occasion I (nervously) stayed strong, choosing to plumb slightly deeper in the water column.
As we powered up the river in the Tandem Hobie Outrigger, Hilly was having the first cast at all the cod hot spots, while I was quickly following suit with my subsurface Swimbait.
Success! After chasing Hilly’s bait out of a strangle of sticks I came up tight on a little fella that woofed my presentation on the pause.
Pretty chuffed, I continued to ‘switch bait’ up river and follow Hilly’s surface lure that was still being boofed with sustained regularity.
However, just as the clouds began to break my Swimbait was again cracked, but this time by a much bigger fish. After a nervous tussle around a submerged tree, we soon fumbled the lip grips into a metre of summer green.
With six fish for the morning – four on the surface and two sub – it again validated our approach to, where possible, fish different depths and lure types during each session.
Looking back, I have no doubt we would’ve shared those surface bites if we both ran surface baits all morning.
But, I strongly doubt our topwater offerings would have tempted that final metre-beating goodoo – after all, Hilly’s surface lure wobbled past three times before the subsurface Swimbait made its maiden voyage along the same path.
