Weekend Report by – Howard Johns
February 20th and 21st was to have been this year’s Federation National at Mildura. However due to a total state wide lock down caused by another outbreak of COVID in Melbourne we had no choice but to postpone the event until later on in the year ( July 24th & July 25th).
However, a decision was made that regardless of the Nationals if the lockdown was removed and we could travel to Mildura then we would go and hold an event of some sort. We hadn’t had a match up at Mildura since The Mildura Masters in November 2019 and many of us were itching to get back.
We decided that we’d have a KNOCK UP match on the Friday to get some bait into the river and then have a Two-Day Match with the winner being the top combined weight over the two days.
A total of 16 Anglers had registered for the weekend and 15 Anglers wanted to fish on Friday. Unfortunately, the South Australian border was still closed at the time so the anglers from SA were not attend.
Mark Turner arrived in Mildura early and offered to peg the match stretch for us. He put in two sections of 9. We always put in a spare peg as the stretch of river we fish is popular with Campers and House Boats. Thanks Mark, help is always appreciated.
For those of you not familiar with a houseboat. Basically they are a floating palaces often 4 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, Dinning Room , Large upper deck often with an 8 person spa. We hired the one below for a week in December and I can tell you it’s a fantastic holiday (and you even get to fish !!). As it happened it was just as well, we do this, but more on that later.
Thursday night we all meet in the Mildura Working Men’s Club for a few Beers, Dinner and a catch up. This year there were several anglers coming to Mildura for the first time, Wicus Fourie, Dale Jackson and Gareth Smith. The new guys were keen to get as much information as possible.
The Murray River is the largest river in Australia and is used mainly as a source for irrigation water for agriculture. The water is dammed at a huge reservoir (Lake Hume) and then the runoff is controlled to allow a steady flow of water throughout the summer. This year the river was quite high and had a good flow.
Fishing on the Murray River is hard work! You are fishing in some of the harshest environment that Australia has to offer, it’s often very hot, sand that gets into everything and it has wildlife that will kill you, then want eat you (not Crocodiles). But you are catching Carp from 500 Grams to 7 Kilos and you are catching a lot of them. All fishing methods work, Pole and Feeder, that’s both normal feeder and method feeder. Best bait is generally Sweet Corn and you need a lot of groundbait, typically around 25 litres and 10 tins of corn for a 6 hour match. Mildura is a lovely town with great accommodation, nice restaurants and bars. I personally think its on of the best venues we have in Australia.
The weekend was expected to be HOT. The forecast for Friday and Saturday was 39 with light winds and Sunday a bit cooler with 34. The Draw time was set for 7:00 AM for every day and match time will be 09:30 – 15:30. A fabulous morning greeted us on Friday with a terrific sun rise. As expected it was going to be a hot day.
This year we were using the Electronic Match Fishing system from http://www.match-fishing.com so for the first time we tried a full electronic draw. People pressed the button on the phone and a peg was randomly allocated to them.
Since the venue was pegged the day before several Caravans had camped in peg A1 so that was removed and the spare peg A4 (spare peg in the middle of the section) was used. As I said it’s always a good idea to put in a spare peg just in case.
John (End Peg) Foxall got the fancied end peg B9 and was going to be hard to beat. I was on peg B8. Having fished this peg before it is a tricky peg as there is a large snag to your right. We are not exactly sure what it is, but I think it’s a branch sticking up from a larger branch that has fallen into the river some years ago. At some stage the branch has broken off from the surface and is now about 5 foot under the surface. Its hard to find when fishing but when you hook a “lump” they know exactly where to go. This peg will get better over the weekend after some bait has gone in.
We have learnt over the years that as the venue is not fished very often the first day’s fishing is always a bit slow. The idea behind a “knock up” match is that it allows us to get some bait into the river then over the next couple of days hopefully the fish move in over the feed. The river performed exactly as we expected with the top weight of 59 Kilo and a couple of high 20’s. The rest of the weights were well below what we expect for Saturday and Sunday. The result sheet was as follows:
After a day on the bank in the hot sun it was time for a few cold beers, a relax, have some dinner and get ready for the next day. A group of us went out on Friday night for a Pizza and a few more beers. A visit to the Pizza shop has become an annual pilgrimage in Mildura as the Pizza’s are terrific.
Day 1
Day 1 of the competition, Saturday’s draw was again an electronic draw and was completed quickly and efficiently. Everybody headed off to get ready. I was very happy with my draw – B9 (an End Peg).
I caught steady all day but unfortunately the stamp of fish I was catching were all small. I ended up with 68 fish for 55.400 Kilos. As the results unfolded everyone had caught a lot of fish. No one broke the 100 Kilos but Mark Turner nudged it with 96.900 Kilo. Mark was top weight on the day from Peg B7 with Danny Brown second from A6 with 89.350 Kilo. The average weight per angler for day one was a staggering 61 Kilos (134lb).
Day 2
At the conclusion of the draw yesterday a couple of anglers requested that we do a normal draw rather than the electronic draw. So the draw for Sunday was more traditional and we used a draw bag. The usual banter and crack was dished out, but the biggest roar that went up was when Wicus Fourie didn’t draw Peg A3 which he had had for the first 2 days.
Mark Turner was going into day 2 with a slim lead of 7.5 kilos, he would want a good draw to keep the fish coming. He drew A5, not a draw he wanted I suspect. Danny Brown had drawn very well Peg B8 and again John (End Peg ) Foxall got B9. I drew B7 and was very happy, it was a great peg, but more on that shortly.
Part of helping to run a match is being an official. On the way to my peg. Les Markham had drawn B3 and was really concerned. Les has had a hip replacement recently and is not as nimble as he’d like. Getting down to B3 was difficult to say the least. B4 was spare peg and we gave Les the option to take that peg, which he did. That would leave B3 the spare peg.
When I got to my peg – B7 a house boat was moored up. So I took the spare peg B3. The annoying thing was that at 08:30 the house boat moved off leaving the peg free. But all good. I had a spade and spent ten minutes digging some steps so I could get up and down.
Glenn Nicholls had fished B3 the day before for 69 Kilo so I knew it had fish and had been feed. I adopted for a feeder only day today and had a steady day catching 49.7 Kilo.
The flow on the river dropped considerably over the weekend and the weather was much more acceptable, cloudy , nice breeze with temperature of 34, a perfect Mildura day. As you can imagine weigh-in takes sometime with so many fish and when its really hot and dirty work. However everybody chips in and all gets done.
Overall Results
Danny Brown had a terrific Day 2 on Peg B8 with 94.200 and Neil Baggs on B6 had another good catch of 77.850 kilos. These nets of fish put them into 1st and 2nd place respectively. It was very close for 3rd. Keith Thomas had a really good day on B2 with 86 Kilo but it was not quite enough to take 3rd. John (End-Peg) Foxall had another 75 Kilo for a total of 153.300.
In a discussion with the winner Danny Brown. Danny caught 183.550 kilo over the two days . He told me that over the weekend he caught around 20% of his fish on an open-end feeder using hair rigged corn and the remaining 80% of his fish on the Pole. Danny’s pole is one of the old Tricast XRS poles (25 years old now) which is extremely strong and perfectly suited to Australian carp fishing especially when paired with Red Hydro. He fished both days at around 7 / 8 Meters using around 25 litre of a breadcrumb based groundbait and 10 tins of corn each day. His pole rigs was a typically River pole float using 3 and 4 gram using a size 10 and 12 hooks. He did note that as the flow dropped off over the weekend it allowed him to fish a bit lighter.
Neil Baggs who finished second had a terrific weekend and should be congratulated as Neil has only recently started match fishing. He decided to fish only the feeder and fished two lines 25 meter and 30 meter. He fished an inline open end feeder with hair rigged corn and feed plenty of ground bait on both feeder lines to keep the fish interested.
The weekend concluded with the presentation in the working men’s club Sunday evening. The payout was done and also some prizes allocated from some sponsorship from Bank Angler. Bank Angler had provided some flavourings and special groundbait mixes.
The big thank you to “Bank Angler”, anyone wanting anything from them should visit there website using the link below :
Finally a big thank you from everyone who participated to Adrian Gore for all his hard work in making these events happen.
The next two Federation events are the South Australian State Championships at Lake Albert on March 27th / 28th then followed by the AFCAA Feeder Master on Lake Hume May 29th / 30th.
We hope to see you there.
Australian Federation of Coarse Anglers Association 