2 minute read
Hook, Line & Sinker
Cod's Country
In more than 20 years of Hook, Line and Sinker the crew has never officially joined the metre club—until now! Andrew Hart tells the story of one that didn’t get away.
In fishing there are many dreams that keep anglers going back to the water time and time again, even when it means going home empty handed. Catching your fish of a lifetime is at the top of that bucket list—like securing a 10-pound trout, a 1000-pound marlin or, in our case, a metre-long Murray Cod. It’s a true dream fish—much desired, but never actually realised.
Hook, Line and Sinker has for many years had a love-hate relationship with Murray Cod. These big Aussie natives are easily one of the hardest fish to catch when you’re filming. They seem to taunt us, time and time again.
We’ve spent many long, cold days and thousands of casts not even looking like catching one. But that’s cod fishing, and despite its challenges, there’s a special breed of anglers out there who only fish for cod. And I can understand why.
There’s just something about them.
They can grow to an enormous size. They are found far and wide throughout the Murray-Darling system, and when you finally get a hook up, all the effort seems worth it—even if they don’t really fight very well anyway!
This season on Hook, Line & Sinker, we started our road trip a little later than normal. After hooking up our brand-new Bar Crusher 730 XT in late autumn, we headed north from Melbourne in our new Isuzu D-MAX X-TERRAIN for an attempt at a cool-water cod.
The chosen location was Lake Mulwala, to showcase what this big Bar Crusher boat can do in skinny water. At seven metres long it’s a serious offshore fishing weapon, but it’s designed with a centre console and a huge amount of fishing room on the bow, so it’s also the perfect cod or barra fishing machine. No excuses.
We really enjoyed the four-hour tow to Mulwala. The new D-MAX handled the big boat on the back with ease, with the optimised suspension giving us a smooth, quiet ride on some rather uneven back roads.
Our three days at Mulwala gave useverything for which cod fishing is renowned. We spent hours and hours battling a fierce southwesterly breeze and catching nothing at all. Our guide for the trip, local guru Kyle Dalrymple, managed to catch the first cod—casting a lure into one of many great snags in the lead up to evening on our first day. It wasn’t a monster, but at least the Bar Crusher was now a proven cod catcher!
My dreams came true the next morning. You’ll have to watch the episode, but it’s fair to say I’m still on a high after finally getting the bite from the fish I’ve chased for 20 years—a 103-centimetre monster that will forever be in my memory.
Murray Cod. Believe the hype. The brand new season of Hook, Line and Sinker starts on 7mate on 19 September 2021.
