When it comes to chasing XOS Murray Cod one of the most glaring observations we have noted over the last few years is how explosive, yet short, the bites windows can be.
It really is a ‘pane’, as the hot bite periods can be as short as thirty minutes each side of first and last light. When you look at amount of time you spend on the water each day a hot bite window of only an hour a day needs to be maximized.
To illustrate this, on a recent trip to Copeton dam in Northern NSW we landed 14 cod for the trip, with ten of them coming during the low light bite windows. That’s over two-thirds of our entire cod haul coming from just a two hour period.
With this frenetic, yet truncated, action in mind we needed to put a plan in place that saw us maximize this timeframe. As a result, we decided to fly kick convention out the window and do something we swore never to do.
It wasn’t an easy adjustment as we were in direct breach of one of the cod commandments – tho shall always help a fellow angler handle and photograph their fish. But if you are not moving forward and adapting you will eventually get left behind. Profound, I know.
So, what we decided to do was have the angler that caught the fish inside the bite window take full responsibility for the setting up of the camera and the unhooking of the fish in the net. While this was all done in a very short timeframe, it allowed the secondary angler to sneak another half a dozen casts ‘through’ the bite window.
Once the fish was unhooked and the camera was set up, the second angler picked up the camera and snapped a few lifelong memories before the victorious angler released the fish back into the water. While this small adaptation of strategy only allowed for an extra handful of casts it accounted for two extra cod last trip that we otherwise might not have run into.
If the second angler is lucky enough to come up tight on another native, it’s a good idea to dunk the first cod back into the water in the net to make sure they don’t spend too long out of the drink. You can then haul it aboard again, carefully placing them on the cool deck, before using the net to land the second fish.