Hill373737

Here's a quick report from yesterday's session with a mate on the MacDonald River ....... to set the scene, it was minus 5 when we launched at 7:30am, there was a pond near where we parked the car that was frozen over and it was the usual sketchy slide and scramble to get the kayaks in the water. In a first for me, for about the first half hour, I had ice forming on the line guide of my baitcaster. I usually try and take a few photos of the morning light but it was just too damn cold. The bite wasn't crazy with the water level getting lower and very cold and as usual, there was a lot of casting and kayak dragging over rockbars between the fish. All up, we finished with 3 cod each, and mine included a 73cm and a 70cm. The 70cm was deep in the back of a snag under an overhanging tree and it would be fair to say it owned me for a while, I was dragged in backwards trying to fight the fish over my shoulder, duck under branches while trying to rotate the kayak. My GPS track shows we covered around 9kms and all up, I think we dragged kayaks over 10 sets of rapids and rockbars. I think I'm due a recovery day today but tomorrow will be into it again, with a solo trip to a spot thats 3.5kms up the Peel from where I launch that I think of as my personal cod playground.

Looks like good water, pity the cod weren't keen. Its been very good around Tamworth for the past few months with the Peel and Namoi both fishing well and I even picked up a fat 72cm fish from Split Rock a few days ago. I've been mostly fishing the rivers in the kayak so I'm very happy its starting to warm up with most days above 20 degrees now and very few minus mornings. Here's a few photos from the past few weeks.

Great thread bn, and its interesting to see how others have evolved their fishing preferences over the years. I've fished all my life, starting with a dad who was passionate about catching big mulloway and since we had 4wds back when they weren't anywhere as common as now, spent a lot of time fishing isolated beaches with a lot of time spent on Stockton Beach. It would be fair to say in my early years, I didn't think much of any reel that wasn't an Alvey!. Looking back, I've been fortunate to have experienced some crazy fishing adventures, starting with a Fraser Island trip in the early 70s, then multiple trips to Cape York in the 90s and then the maddest trip of them all, fishing Kiritimati in the middle of the Pacific Ocean for tuna and GTs from a wooden outrigger in 2014. Other than occasionally throwing pillies at tailor on the beach, I'd transitioned to a lure fisherman many years ago and that developed into a love for casting against edges, initially for bream and flathead but now, I am definitely badly addicted to fishing for Murray Cod from my boat, kayak or walking a bank. For me, its been and still is a huge learning curve but fits nicely with my desire for adventure and a challenge.

Great report bn , and good to see you getting out for a fish! Just being on the boat with a mate who caught a metery is worth the cost of admission. I'm much better prepared fpor the cold this year, here's a selfie from earlier this week on a foggy morning, minus 3 when I launched just after 6am. There was still frost on the banks and ice on many of the snags a couple of hours after sunrise.

I'd believe it, I'm sure I get more fish when I wear my lucky red undies, I'd love to understand the science behind that!!

I've used the Mustad Fastach clips in place of loop knots for a few years and haven't had any issues with them on everything from bream, flatties and tailor through to murray cod. I used the smallest size 0 on 3lb leader when I fished a lot for bream and didn't notice any impact on the action of jackal chubbies or slim swimz plastics on 1/40 jighead. The big advantage is that you're not cutting the leader when changing lures unless it gets damaged.

haha!! I've had a bit of that Neil .... a few times I've been shown a photo of a cod and told it was caught it in the Namoi .... that covers a lot of country! To be fair though, there were a couple of people up here who really helped me learn about cod and tackle, and without giving spots away, they were happy to share info on what worked for them and where to look for cod at different times of the year. The guys at the local tackle shop are also very good, though their advice usually ends with me opening my wallet. I think that since cod can be very territorial especially in the rivers, other fishos can be quite secretive about actual spots they fish. I've already experienced catching a cod on a snag, then a week or so later, catching a similar sized fish on the same snag. Without tagging its hard to know if its the same fish but I reckon there is every chance it is especially if its in water that down't see a lot of fishing pressure. Hilly

Thats a great challenge, it will get tougher as you get through the year and knock off the easier species, although for you Dave, that includes Jacks and GTs!! How are you and Amy tracking so far? 🙂 I set myself challenges each year, it definitely keeps you motivated. At the start of this year, I set myself a target of 75 Murray Cod with 2 fish over a metre. With a little more than 4 months of cod fishing to go in the local waterways, I'm on 42 cod but the biggest ytd is 77cm .......I'm hoping for a good winter at Split Rock!

Yep, I've done it and don't miss work one bit. I retired January 2022, we bought a house on just over an acre in Tamworth and I love my life. I'm sitting in my shed, havoing a beer, listening to some music and updating my fishing diary after today's session as I write this. My wife occassionally jokes that I should get a job and my standard reply is that " I'd be happy to get a job, I just don't want any work!!" After many years in business, I have some personal disciplines and tools that I still use to plan and make sure I maximise my time, regardless if I'm fishing, doing work around the house or making sure there is plenty of time for hanging out with my grandkids. It must be working as I'm fishing 3 or 4 times a week and everything else falls into place and gets done. I've directed a lot of my old energy and drive from work into the business of catching Murray Cod and the total experience, from mucking around with gear to landing a fish gives me a massive mental buzz!! It works for me, I do hope you can find a way to get the buzz back! ... and finally, I live by this, heard it in a song once.... "Do your living while your living, as there ain't no coming back!!"

Since its possibly fairly snaggy, best lure choices may be a 4 inch grub plastic rigged weedless and weighted 1/8 to 1/4 or alternatively a spinnerbait in a 3/8 is a pretty good allrounder. Beef up the leader to what you might normally use, something around 25lb to 30 lb should be OK. With this approach, if its snaggy, you'll lose less gear than HBs or plastics on normal jigheads.

Maybe I'm just a little crazy but after a lifetime off mostly fishing coastal inshore and offshore waters, I'd say the overall experience of the fishing I do now is very hard to beat. Every session is an adventure with no crowds, magnificent scenery and the challenge that cod represent has me hooked. I certainly don't catch fish in the numbers that I did at the coast but each cod is a unique experience. Here's an update of a kayak session since my initial post.... A mate and I had scoped a section of the river between a road bridge and a stock reserve, we estimated it to be around 11kms so knew it would be a full day and made sure we had head torches etc in case we were still on the water after dark. We left a car at the end point at 6:30am and headed back to the top, launched kayaks with a plan to keep moving through the early sections to at least give ourselves a chance of being off the water before dark. I started throwing surface lures, these were some prototype timber lures made by a mate but unfortunately the flow in this skinny section of the river made it hard to sit long enough off a snag to get repeated casts in on topwater so changed to a favourite spinnerbait. It didn't take long to to hit the first of a number of obstacles we would face during the day - this one was a huge fallen tree that spanned the river so we had to drag the kayaks up a steep muddy bank, through the hole from the root ball, then back down another muddy bank. It would be best described as a period of grunting, groaning, slipping, sliding punctuated by frequent descriptive expletives. 🙂 At the 4 hour mark, we had covered 4 kilometres so decided we needed to up the pace. At the 7 hour mark, we had covered 6kms so that plan wasn't working. We decided to paddle a few kms to get back on track and realised that the good water we had dawdled through earlier in the day was now replaced by really good water with massive laydowns, undercuts and deep holes. Oh well.. put that section in the memory for next time. By the time we reached the end, we'd covered just over 13 kms in 10.5 hours finishing in the dark and probably paddled close to half the distance leaving some of the best water we'd seen that day unfished. We'd managed 11 good fish between us with my best a 63cm model out of a snag on the 5th cast but the fish of the day was caught by my mate Glen who pulled a very solid 66cm cod out of a large boil in big rapids in a section of very large boulders and rock ledges. Unfortunately the gopro battery died so I only have a couple of photos but we'll go back and fish it again, we just need enough discipline to paddle the first 4 or 5kms this time. cheers Hilly l

No, not as far as the stone house, I've thopught about driving in to the house but have told its off limits unless you have it booked.

There are Silver Perch here but I haven't caught any, although I usually look at Yellowbelly as bycatch while fishing for cod. I have listened to a Social Fishing podcast about targetting Silver Perch in Chaffey Dam so might give that a crack one day.

hi Neil, great photos, I love the application of knowledge and the buzz of chasing fish,but I do I think the scenery we get to see as fisherman is very special and something that a big part of the population never get to appreciate. I'm on a mission to meet as many cod as I can and would be keen to meet some with a different postcode, I might try and work out a trip down your way sometime and perhaps we can connect for a fish and I'll recover a few lures for you. Since moving to Tamo, I've been swimming a few times to get lures back so maybe we should make it summer!! haha!! I talk to my dad who turns 90 this year about fishing, we were fortunate to go to Fraser Island and regularly fished Stockton Beach in the early 70s and I don't think at that time we fully appreciated how special it was ..... but I do tell him its better to have the memories than not having done it all. All the best mate! cheers Hilly

I've fished both ends last year but this end I've only been up the top end and that was after a bit of rain so level was a bit high and a lot of run. It hasn't rained for a while and river is back to a nice fishable level so I might try it again in the next few weeks.

A frozen donut at Split Rock today - perfect conditions from around 8:30am but first I had to survive the 1 degree temp at the ramp at 5:30am and a very heavy fog for a couple of hours. However, its another day tomorrow and another cold start fishing an 11km stretch of the Peel west of Tano planned!

I feel like I’ve lucked out with the timing of my move to Tamworth, fish stocks seem good and there is plenty of water in the dams and rivers ...... I now definitely have a bad addiction to the hit of a cod on lure. Last year I made a lot of trips back to the coast for a saltwater fix but this year I’ve really started to get into the freshwater groove, I fish 3 or 4 (or sometimes 5 times 🙂 ) a week and every session just feels like an adventure without the coastal crowds and many times, without seeing any-one else while I’m out fishing. Split Rock With so much water in the impoundments as they’re all around the 100% mark, I made the decision last year to concentrate on Split Rock and get to know its various moods. I was fortunate to get an 80cm and a 121 cm cod last year so quality was good but I really struggled at times racking up heaps of donuts (which I like to think of as learning days or casting practice!!). This year, I’ve caught plenty in the 45 to 50s with 2 cod in the 60s as well as quite a few yellowbelly that think nothing of hitting a lure meant for a cod. I’m a lure caster rather than a troller so tend to focus on topwater lures, spinnerbaits, chatterbaits and swimbaits, Lately I’ve also started throwing some large plastics, 6 inch plus but haven’t hooked up on one yet! The impoundment cod have plenty of food options and definitely don’t burn the calories of the river cod as they are always a lot fatter. A few of the old timers have told me the cod don’t fire up in the dams until the first frost and we had a cracker this morning with the temp at -2 degrees at 7am, needless to say, I’m off to Splitty tomorrow! 🙂 Peel River Well, forget looking at tide charts, I’m regularly looking at the water levels on the Water NSW web-site. I’ve fished the Namoi up at Warrabah a couple of times but I’ve found the Peel River to be the most productive, accessing the river out of town through the various Travelling Stock Reserves (TSRs) and walking the bank or throwing the kayak in. The fishing has ben great , with good sized cod and yellowbelly and even a carp deciding a spinnerbait was just too tempting to leave alone. Best cod is a 77cm model out of the kayak which almost got a points victory over me, it came out of a lay down, smashed the lure and then dragged me deep into an overhanging tree while it buried itself into the snag. After twice giving it a little line which it used to go deeper, and by now it was directly under the kayak, I managed to extract it by hand on the 40lb leader. Later this week, a mate annd I have scoped out an 11km section of the river and will be hitting it in the kayaks, it will be an all day effort but definitely get us into some water where the cod don’t see a lot of lures. The Scenery I call it big sky country up here, the sunrises, sunsets and scenery while out on the water is just spectacular. From my house, we get sunsets that sometimes last for hours as the sun fades out across the Liverpool Plains, just bloody amazing and after moving here 15 months ago, I still take time every day to check out the sunset. A mate I fish with here does some laser etching of timber and surprised me with this little memento which has pride of my place in my shed. 3 solid days of fishing coming up, lets hope I get to meet a few more cod this week!!

I had a similar chunk missing out of a prop a few years back and was told by my mechanic that I risked gearbox damage due to the out of balance if I kept using it. I didn't feel any vibration but decided a new prop was a cheaper option than a gearbox rebuild.

Since moving up here to Tamworth - I've managed to put a few lures in storage at Split Rock as well as in the Peel and the Namoi ...... and I've gotten used to the occasional swim to recover a lure. 🙂

What an amazing fishing trip and experience for you both - good stuff!!

Good to see you getting a couple of nice cod BN but feel for you losing the rod! I get pretty narky just losing a lure!

Nice work Dave, those photos show a special 2022 for you and Amy. All the best to both of you for a cracking 2023 and I hope you get onto some nice cod over NY. Cod fishing is pretty good up this way at the moment, since my big one a few weeks back I've been consistently getting 45 to 55 cm modelsout of Split Rock - just can't find another big one....yet!! steve

I was actually fishing 20lb braid with 30lb leader - in Split Rock with the high water levels, I tend to fish the shallow low slope grassy edges especially the fingers of shallower water that stick out - there isn't a lot of snags as the cod move up to the shallows to feed which would be very different to what Neil is usually fishing in the rivers. I'm also looking for longer casting distances and the lighter braid certainly helps with that. For the Raider gear junkies, I was fishing: Samaki SZG-661BMH 10-17lb line rating rod Abu Garcia Revo 4 Premier baitcaster 20lb Fins Evolve X8 with 30lb Sunline Fluoro leader tied to main line with a Crazy Alberto knot - (I'm crap at tying FG knots that I can trust) A big disclaimer here is that this is my first year fishing primarily fresh water so my thinking is likely to change next week!! 🙂

Thanks Neil - I was daydreaming watching the sunrise when the cod hit a couple of metres from the boat, I initially thought it may have been a smaller cod foul-hooked as it went deep and the wind blew the boat out into much deeper water. After all the rain we've had recently, the water is still milk coffee coloured and I never got closer than the leader knot out of the water then it would run again. I reckon my heart rate climbed rapidly when I finally got a look at the size of its head and realised I was onto something special.

Some days are just meant to be - today was a beautiful early start up at Split Rock Dam then 5 casts into an area of shallows along a grassy bank, I picked up this 121cm model, fishing a Cod Walloper surface lure. By time I got it to the boat, I think we were both knackered!!! I swam it beside the boat for quite a while, then into the boat for a couple of quick photos then another long swim before it cruised off. There's a lot of casts between fish but days like this make it worthwhile!!