Clock off, grab the rods, drive to the river and walk until the fishing starts — that is the unglamorous reality behind a lot of big Murray cod, and it is exactly how angler Cameron Constable and his mate Dan went about their overnight session, hiking well upstream into cod country with the light fading.
The early hours tested them. There were follows and a fish glimpsed cruising in the open, but the bank delivered little beyond a ration-pack meal until the river finally switched on. A cod around 75cm broke the drought, and then came the fish of the trip.
Dan's cod measured 95cm and looked like it had eaten a meal it had no right to — a belly so full the pair reckoned it might have swallowed something the size of a duck. It was a personal best by a clear margin, handled briefly for a photo and released. Not to be outdone, Constable then landed a 91cm fish of his own in the dying light, a cracker in its own right that only looked modest next to Dan's giant.
Both fish fell to big lures, including a paddle-tail fished on heavy line — the go-to approach when you are hunting one standout fish rather than a tally. Constable summed the trip up as an unreal session, the kind that rewards the cold walk and the long blank spells with two metery-class cod swimming away strong.