On The Improve!!

[Hill373737]

It feels like the fishing in the river has improved in the past week, hard to say why but the water level seems to have stabilised for now and the barometer has been low but steady.

I headed over to one of my regular spots this morning, its a section that has previously produced my 2 biggest river cod and usually fishes well.

Conditions were great , not much wind, overcast and 25 degrees at 5:45am and a cracking sunrise had me feeling optimistic.

I was still burning from losing a good fish near there 2 days ago, it managed to get into a root ball before I could turn it and buried itself into the submerged timber. It was about 1.5m below the surface as I coulkd see my leader knot and I gave it a couple of pokes with my paddle which sometimes gets them back out but this one just buried in further and unfortunately I busted off.

I started throwing a Cod Walloper top water lure in the pre dawn light but with the recent strong winds, there was a lot of leaves etc on the surface so I changed to a spinnerbait,  using one of my favourites for the river, a Full Moon Jnr Bruiser in Purple.

It didn't take long and I had 2 small cod in the kayak. The cod had been hard to find and spinnerbaits just didn't work recently so things are looking up.

I was starting to feel like I was back in the cod groove when my lure got absolutely belted coming past a nice laydown in an area with vertical high banks so good water depth. In my head, I had started the "good cod, good cod" mantra and was shocked to find I'd hooked a stonka yellowbelly which was definitely bigger than my previous river best of 48cms.

A quick lipgrip when I got it to the kayak then had to swim it across to the other side of the river to find a tiny endge I could get out of the kayak for a photo and measure. It went 52.5cm and put up a good fight on cod gear, it would have been a handful a few months when it was closed season.

Here's a couple of photos from a short but good session on the river:

 

 

 

 

[kantong]

nice fish there mate! well done on the yellowbelly, what a beauty

[AlbertW]

Looking good Hilly!

[R E G I C Y C L E]

That's a stonka of a yella for a river fish, well done!

[Yowie]

Nice fish for your effort, especially the yella fella.

[bessell1955]

That Cod is so well marked.

[rickmarlin62]

Jealous

[Pickles]

Another great report @Hill373737, very healthy looking cod and great pics (as always 👍).

Those spinnerbaits work so well on so many different species. I I often wonder what will be the next big thing in artificial baits.

 

[Hill373737]

10 hours ago, Pickles said:

Another great report @Hill373737, very healthy looking cod and great pics (as always 👍).

Those spinnerbaits work so well on so many different species. I I often wonder what will be the next big thing in artificial baits.

 

Thanks @Pickles, spinnerbaits are also a fairly easy lure to fish so a great way for newbies to start in freshwater. I have often wondered how very small spinnerbaits would work on bream, I might give it a shot one day when I'm over the coast.

I also love throwing chatterbaits up here, I'm heading over the coast for a few days in March around the new moon to hopefully annoy a few big flatties on the flats and have been thinking about taking a fcouple of big chatterbaits to run along dropoffs as the tide drops and water drains off the flats.

[big Neil]

Great to have a bit of fishing faith restored Hilly. We get used to disappointment when chasing Cod as they are not always cooperative. Doesn't take much to please us river nuts, a decent fish, or even a good one that got away. Keep up the good work and I'll enjoy reading the reports. 

Tight lines, bn