I recently had the pleasure of fishing Lake Mulwala at the Central Vic lure casters super series. What a weekend! Not the best start to 2021, beginning with wind and rain and ended with sunburn. Day 1 started with the choice to go up the river out of the wind or stay and battle the wind. I had pre fished the river a couple of weeks earlier with great success, so we headed upstream into the ovens river. After about an hour we began noticing there were no other boats around and wondered if we’d made the wrong call. We kept plugging away with no action but soon decided it was time to make the call and not be stubborn/pigheaded. Next we headed down to the everglades to fish some flow throughs. This worked but a few other competitors were doing the same thing which made it a little harder to get fresh water. We finished day 1 with 1 yella and 1 cod.
We really needed to lift our game on day 2. We recovered from our mistakes with a nice meal at the tavern and a few cold beverages. Up early and ready to battle the elements we had made the call to try and battle the wind this time. Fishing the main bay for the first half of the day and 1 yella in the bag we had to draw on previous experience; if they are not bitting deep they must be shallow. We spent the afternoon fishing under 6ft of water with another 3 cod to get us a top 10 finish.
Another night of licking our wounds we had a good meal a few more frothies and a good night sleep. Day 3 was a shotgun start so we new we could get to our spot before anyone else. We did the run down to the bottom of the lake but unfortunately when we got there a couple of social fishos already were already on the bank making lots of noise. We fished for another hour following them along the bank until we decided to move. This is where it all came together! Instead of relying on electronics or listening to dock talk we searched for fresh water that nobody else had fished. We went extremely shallow and fished under 3 ft of water in places where most wouldn’t venture. The heavily timbered laydowns where you couldn’t even have the electric in the water was the key to our success. We went from catching a few fish to having our best session yet. We caught 4 legal size cod and dropped at least 6 more, even dropping a fish last cast. At this point we thought we had lost the chance of winning. Coming in 1 fish short of a bag you never have confidence of winning. But when we started to talk with people at the ramp and they were saying it was the toughest day so far! Now we were thinking maybe we can get a top 3. Going back to the tavern to find out who won we were not confident at all, but did the thing and supported everyone else instead of going home early. The names were called and numbers of fish were well down. As the tournament director called more names the excitement started to grow, and then they called our names out in first place! We were so happy that we had adapted and didn’t give up. To be on the stage with Mulwala royalty was one of the highlights of my career so far. Declan and Myself never gave up and worked as a team all weekend. You could say luck played a role but I say luck works both way good and bad so we put it down to perseverance. The tools of the trade over the weekend were ATC reels spooled with 20lb sufix 832 and 20lb Unitika leader on a Bone Drago 6ft 10 inch medium soft baitcaster. We used Bassman spinnerbaits all weekend but found we downsized to a TW size lure as the weekend went on. Coreys Dam Fishing
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