The Biggest of the Biggest by Stephen Booth

In the last few years fishing really big lures for Murray cod has taken off with anglers chasing massive green fish.

To meet this demand, the crafty Australian lure designers have developed and released a range of lures over 12cm that are specifically designed to target these big fish. And that 12cm is at the crux of this review. We are going to present as many Murray cod lures over 12cm long that we can find - and that includes spinnerbaits, chatter-style baits, hardbodied lures and surface lures. As long as it's big, it's in.

Just one more word on the definition; big also includes hard bodied lures that have painted or metal bibs as the bib forms part of the body profile. In clear-bibbed models the bib is not included in the overall length.

WHY GO BIG?

So why have big lures become so popular in the last few years? Is it that anglers are chasing bigger fish? Do they want lures to get deeper? Do big cod have a preference for bigger, one-off meals? Do you need a big lure to hang big terminal tackle from when chasing big fish? I decided to talk to a few gun anglers and a few of the lure manufacturers to get a bit of an overview of why anglers should have at least a few big cod lures in their box - or as the case may be, in a separate box!

A bit of history shows that bigger lures for bigger cod have been around for years. For starters the real old timers who trolled aeroplane spinners behind their boats went for the biggest home made versions they could find to tempt bigger fish. Then came the Flatfish in all its sizes, but cod anglers loved the big 5.5" model and then some of the Bagley's stable of lures used for walleye fishing entered the market. Models like the Bagley's Smoo look a lot like modern Australian cod lures.

After seeing how well these lures worked, Australian lure crafters got into the act with the legendary Peter Newell producing the famous and very much in demand Kadaitcha with painted bib and eyes on the bottom of the lure. The Kadaitcha really set a benchmark for large cod lures and many similar lures followed. But then, with dwindling cod numbers, worsening environmental conditions and poor fisheries management large lures dropped right out of favour for years.

That was until more recently when big lures like the CodSeeker from Michael Poulos shocked anglers with its sheer size (the original was 175mm) and now we have a range of quality, Australian-built large cod lures that are made specifically for big cod.