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Giant cod fever sweeps through Copeton
  |  First Published: July 2016



Winter is well and truly here and as predicted the fishing has been exceptional over the last month. It seems that there are metre plus fish are being caught and released every other day.

The biggest during last month that was reported to me was an absolute howler at 127cm caught by regular visitor from Melbourne, Dean Norbiato. Copeton local gun anglers like Brook Stewart and Josh Usher are also racking up impressive numbers of fish with many over a metre. A crew from Wilson Tackle have also been down to try their hand at Australia’s greatest freshwater fish

In the last few weeks, most of the fish have been coming off the weed bed edges in the main body of the dam. It appears that all manner of fish are working the weeds and looking for food and trying to avoid becoming food. It’s the circle of life – little fish eat smaller pray items and big fish eat little fish.

The lures of choice have varied from day to day with a mix of surface lures, spinnerbaits and swimbaits getting the job done. For fishing the surface, a mix of paddlers and wakebaits have been producing consistent results. The new triple jointed wakebait from New England Lures is proving very effective, as is the Mudeye Snake. There are a number of new lures coming out of the woodwork as the interest in surface fishing for big cod continues to gain momentum. Some of the lures turning up now are pushing up towards 400mm in length.

Once the sun is up the fish lose interest in surface feeding, so then it’s time to change to spinnerbaits and hardbodies. The lures that is proving very effective this year are swimbaits. These lures have a subtle and very lifelike action in the water and depending on the make and model, will float, sink or suspend at rest, making them very versatile.

Spinnerbaits seem to be getting bigger, with most suppliers adding 2, 3 and even 4oz models to their range.

Big Lures are the secret to big fish, and I had a quick fish before work the other morning and tossed around a 120mm paddler for an hour for not a sign of a fish then swapped to a 220mm wakebait and had two big hits in 15 minutes, from the same areas I had worked with the smaller lure.

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