Here is freshwater fishing guru and GoFish Nagambie Ambassador Rhys Creed with some tips on casting at structure for Murray Cod. Check out his insights here.

The above image demonstrates the perfect piece of structure for Murray Cod and as you can see there are a number of good areas to cast along this log.

1. This is by far the best! The root ball is usually where the largest fish hides out and provides the best cover and ambush location for the fish. This spot is definitely worth 3-5 casts.

2. Moving along you can see there is evidence of a small stick poking up which could mean more structure under the log. There is also plenty of cover and shade for the fish.

3. You always want to cast to as many spots as you can and in this situation, you should work your way down the log. There could be fish hiding tight under the fallen trunk.

4. This is an area where you might find a small and hungry fish waiting for food to flow past.
Now my last tip… on a log like this a spinnerbait is by far the preferred lure choice. Reason being, you are casting tight to a log and you need to allow it to sink underneath the structure.

The below image is another example of Murray Cod structure!

This shows how much structure can actually be beneath the water surface. The picture in the top right shows a high river and the X is a location where we have previously caught a large Murray Cod.

As you can see, when the water is lower there is a gap between the logs which is the perfect hole for a big fish to hide. This is exactly where the big cod was sitting in wait for something to eat.

Trolling is a technique well worth using in the GoFish Competition! Rhys Creed has a look at some the best trolling hot spots and the gear to get the results at GoFish Nagambie.

WHY TROLLING?

The lake is fed by the Goulburn River which snakes its way through the system. It’s always the deepest part of the lake and therefore a refuge and hunting ground for fish. They will move into these areas when it gets too hot and also when it gets too cold.

The best way to target these fish sitting in deeper water is to troll. Plus your lure will always be in the zone when trolling this means you’ll have more chance at catching fish.

WHERE SHOULD I TROLL?

As mentioned, the river channel is the best place to troll… but there is a lot of river? What you want to do is look for a few key things:

1. First of all try to find a ‘run’ (a length of bank that you can troll) that has structure. In Nagambie there is a mass of standing trees and these can be seen throughout the shallow sections of the lake. In some sections though there is standing timber right on the edge of the river bed. The best kind of timber will be what you can find down deep using your sounder. Pick a spot and do a run, if the section of water you chose comes up with heaps of timber – perfect!

2. Second of all you want to target the outside bends, these are usually the deepest have the most timber and the biggest fish.

3. Third – you want to look for overhanging trees and shade. Cover from above is very important for a few reasons. Thick gum trees create shade down below, they drop limbs which become structure but most importantly, food falls from above and into the water. You’ll find in any form of fishing for Murray Cod that you’ll find more hungry fish in areas below thick overhanging tree cover.

WHAT’S THE BEST DEPTH?

Trolling depth is important. The river bed in the lake can reach depths up to 11m and averages 7-9m of depth. When trolling the river bed you want to be fishing on either side of the channel, rather than the middle.

WHY?

Each side of the river bed is where the original trees lined the banks of the Goulburn River, so these would have all fallen in and would be littered on either side, whereas the middle of the channel will be much barer.

The best depth to troll is anywhere from 4-9m but it all depends on the depth of the channel just out from the drop off. So that’s the rule you want to follow… find the river bed and it will drop off really quickly from the flats. You want to be trolling right next to that drop off in the deep water which could range anything from 4-9m of depth.

WHAT SHOULD I TROLL?

There are a mass of lures on the market that you can troll and they will work. Below I’ve got the top three type of lures to consider:

1. 60-120mm Diving Hardbody Lures – this is the first choice as it will give you the best chance of catching both smaller and larger fish. If you want to catch smaller cod and golden perch use a lure between 60-90mm, anything over 90mm will attract larger Murray Cod above 70cm but you’ll still catch all sized fish. My pick would be a 90mm Balista Dyno, 70mm & 90mm AC Invader.

2. 120mm Plus Diving Hardbody Lures – if you’re only out there for the giants then use lures in the 150mm range, even up to 200mm. These larger lures will emit a giant thump and will attract larger fish. 120mm & 150mm AC Invaders would be my pick of the lures in the 30ft bib, perfect for this application.

3. 1oz Spinnerbaits – now this usually isn’t my preferred pick of the lures to troll but in recent year many anglers have been landing some great fish trolling spinnerbaits. It take a little bit more concentration as they sink rather than float and you need to set your speed correctly, but they are well worth a crack. Anything in the 1-1.5oz range would suit the depth of Nagambie perfectly.

That was a fair bit of information but all valuable considering the prize money that up for grabs. Take note and even though trolling isn’t always as fun as casting it could be the technique that helps you take home that grand prize.

Winter fishing is for those of us who are CRAY-zy enough to head out in the blistering cold, it’s the season to be brave and bare the freezing temperatures, all in the name of netting some Murray Cray, our favourite crustacean.

Read are our top tips to increase your Murray Cray catch rate.

Bait

Murray Cray have an appetite that rivals that of their freshwater mates with the same initials, Murray Cod. They eat anything and everything and we’ve been hearing reports of them being caught on bait including the likes of capsicum, rabbit, sheeps head, chicken necks, apricots and even potatoes.

What do we find works best? Carp, fresh meat and offal or pierced tins of dog or cat food. Make sure whatever bait you go for you tie it to the middle of the net.

Where to drop your nets

You’ve got your nets baited and ready to go, now its all about placement, to make sure you coax those Murray Cray out and about and get them taking the bait.

You want to drop your nets adjacent to fallen timber and banks in no less then 2 meters of slow-moving water.

Retrieval

When retrieving your net, you should pick up any slack line until your directly above the net, then pull the net off the riverbed with purpose. Nothing worse than watching those Murray Cray escape the net.

Regulations

Murray Cray are extremely slow growing and can take up to 9 year to reach legal length. We need to look after these spiky crays, so please follow the regulations and check out VFA website here, for more information. As a quick reference;

Murray Cray have a slot limit, from the eye socket to the carapace is 10cm with the maximum being 12cm. Be sure to pick up a cray measuring device.

Berried females, carrying eggs under their tales, should be released immediately.

There is daily bag limit of two per licenced fisho and a possession limit of four.

Happy crayfishing!!

This man took home $80,000 from the inaugural GoFish Nagambie. There’s been controversy surrounding the lure he used and there’s been every conspiracy theory under the sun surrounding the winning 110cm Murray Cod he landed. We’ve asked this absolute legend, all the questions you’ve been asking us.

Check out what Clint has to say and here once and for all, what the lure was that he used.

Clint is the guy we’d all love to hate, truth is, we’re all just jealous. He is the lucky bugger who won a life changing amount of money for doing something that we all love, fishing. Unfortunately for us, he makes it impossible to hate him, he’s an absolute legend and the kind of guy everyone wants to be mates with. He’s a down to earth family man, who stayed true to his word and split the cash with his mate he fished the comp with.

Learn more about Clint and check out what he has to say.

I’m a concreter from Albury but grew up in Western NSW in a small town called Tullamore. I have a wife and two daughters. My eldest loves fishing almost as much as me and was with me in the comp. My wife and youngest daughter aren’t quite as keen but might be a bit more interested now. I love my fishing and being out on the water. In fact, much to my wife’s disgust, I actually keep my rods in my walk-in robe and refuse to let her take them outside.

There’s controversy surrounding the lure you used, settle the debate. Which one was it? AC Invader or Spinnerbait.

Sorry everyone, but it was 100% a spinnerbait. I didn’t want to reveal what I had caught it on until after the competition.

…and how can you forget such a thing?

Well if you look closely enough at the photo, it is slightly obscured by the tail, but you can see the red and black spinnerbait that I caught him on. On the Saturday night there were rumours floating around that I had been knocked off the leader board by a 120 + cod. I was gutted. My mate said to tell them you got it on a lure. As I was walking up on stage, I felt anxious and disappointed at the thought of possibly losing $80000, so when asked what I caught it on I said an AC invader. But at the end of the day, it would not have mattered the fishing was tough and a lot of people were trying a lot of different techniques to try and land a fish.

Now, tell us straight, it’s legit isn’t it? What time of day did you catch it, where abouts? Did you move around or stick to one spot? Were you going after the big cod? Basically, we want to know what your strategy was for the comp.

It was 100% legit.

At around 12:30 pm on the first day of the comp, we stopped in the river not far from the ski club ramp for lunch. By this stage, tensions were high and stress levels were through the roof. We hadn’t had a bite. It was cold and a little rainy and the kids were starting to complain.

Throughout the morning we had been switching up from trolling to bait fishing and decided to stop and have a bite to recoup. While we ate, we (my mate, kids and I) put some bait lines in for cod. We hadn’t been getting any bites all day so I thought I might as well throw a spinnerbait around while the kids finished their lunch. However, it was pretty blowy on our side of the river and the other side looked better so we moved over and I started to cast out. After about 3 casts, the fish took the spinnerbait. At first, I actually thought it was a yellowbelly. He gave me a bit of a run for my money, wrapping me around a log a few times but eventually we were able to land him in the boat.

There were probably about 5-6 boats that came over to see the fish. There where also 2 men in another boat from Tatura who actually saw me hook the fish and land it. It was quite funny because when they saw me hook it one yelled out to ask if it was decent. At that stage, it hadn’t really given too much of a head shake so I yelled back that I thought it was a yella and it felt like an ok size. It wasn’t until the tip of my rod bent over and touched the surface of the water that we realised it was a big one! At that stage, we were happy to catch anything but we were always after a big cod. 

Have you received the $80k? What’s the plan for the cash?

Yes.

My mate and I had an agreement before we went in the comp. $50000 goes to the person who catches the fish and the other person gets $30000.  I really didn’t think we would catch the winning fish but either way, it sounded really good to me. and as for the $50000, we will be using that to help build our new home.

Did you catch anything else during the competition?

Unfortunately, no, we didn’t catch anything else, but we did have a couple of bites on Saturday.

Did you get into any other aspects of the festival?

Yes. We spent Friday and Saturday night at the festival hub to have tea. We checked out what was on show with the fishing stores. I have to say I was blown away, I didn’t expect it to be so big. There were a variety of stores and there was always something on for the kids and the food was great too. For our kids, the highlight was probably the fireworks on Saturday night. Overall the atmosphere was really positive and family friendly.

Where do you usually fish? Had you fished Nagambie before or was it beginners’ luck?

I generally fish the Murray River and the Hume Wier around Albury – Wodonga sometimes venturing to upper Murray and down to Bundalong and Mulwala.

I have never fished Nagambie before so it was definitely beginners luck.

What’s it like seeing your face all over the fishing world? Surely the pool room has had to grow for the all the newspaper, magazine clippings and that giant cheque.

It was quite surreal; you never think that it’s going to be you. It still is pretty mind-boggling, you keep running the whole event through your mind and thinking about how lucky we were not only to win but to get the fish in the boat with every possible thing that could have gone wrong. I still do have the big cheque and it lives in our lounge room at the moment, but in our new place, it will be hung up in the shed for sure.

Did you enter the comp with the aim of winning? What made you want to do it?

Of course, I hoped to win, but I never really expected to. I was just looking forward to spending time with my daughter and having a few beers with some mates. I was looking forward to fishing a new area, but I definitely didn’t think I would win.

The actual guarantee that someone was going to win $80000, which didn’t matter what size cod was caught, just the biggest, did attract me to the competition to start with though, and even if I wasn’t to win that prize there were so many other prizes on offer which made it worth a try.

Are you returning to defend your title? What’s the training regime like?

Yes, I will be returning to defend my title. I can’t wait to see what’s on offer.

I haven’t started training yet but maybe I should do some weight lifting – getting my daughter to run around the yard hanging onto my line, trying to drag her back to the tip of my rod. No, I have just been trying to get down to the river whenever I can.