Making mayhem on the Macintyre River by Wayne Kampe

You might have noticed in my Nissan Navara review in this issue of the magazine that I mentioned leaving some vital fishing tackle out of the car. This was a rather unique misadventure on my part as Denise and I had travelled to the Macintyre River west of Goondiwindi for a much-anticipated short break during which I also intended to introduce some of the wild pig population to some fast moving arrows as well as fish for the resident cod.
The upshot is that after setting up a very comfortable camp on the Mac and surveying the fabulous-looking snags on a deep hole right under the campsite I removed all rods and a small tackle box with hooks and sinkers in it from the Navara and on looking further for the two fly reels, two spin reels plus flies and lures I was relying on for some fishing fun discovered they had been left back home.
Good one, Wayne! I'd previously, over the years, left behind a box of food, our sleeping bags for a New England trip (disastrous) plus cutlery, but never fishing tackle. I blame it on a senior's moment!
A trip to Goondiwindi next day saw the credit card produce a reel plus line in the car. With a lot of lures on hand back home I decided on a different tack for the cod on this excursion. Try bait! Others use bait, so why not give it a go? I had no shrimp traps with me or any other means of gathering naturally-occurring bait, so I purchased a packet of small white pilchards and decided I'd salt them to improve their toughness for the fishing style I had in mind.
COD ON THE POPPING RIG
Past experience with these feisty fellows told me that cod were always curious about anything making a bit of unusual noise in their habitat. I've taken many cod on flies, particularly big fat dry flies tied on 6/0 Gamakatsu SL12S hooks worked back on the surface as poppers, so I understood the sort of ruckus that they would investigate and maybe test for tastiness with just a little peck. As they do.
I had a slim float in the tackle box from a recent trip to Iluka so I decided to use it as a popper rather than a bobber with a baited hook aft of the improvised popper for a curious cod to play with.
The rig was easy to set up. I tied a swivel on the main line around a metre and a half above the 40cm long two gang hook trace which had a pea-sized sinker above it to keep the pillie down where a cod could find it.
With the float free running between the hook trace and the split shot the improvised 'popper' worked a treat, making some very good chugs and bloops, as I used the longest rod I had to keep it moving across the surface in short rips and stops. The tactic was designed to interest a cod and get him following, so he would either attack the bait as it moved or do so when I paused between strips. Patience pays in this caper because cod in our inland rivers can be mighty moody, especially in winter and for a two-hour afternoon session the best I achieved was a hard wrench accompanied by a dinner table-sized swirl that told me a cod had just hit and ripped the pilchard clean off the two-hook rig. Missed that one!