Most anglers stay home when the Murray runs high and brown. The cod and perch that know better are the reason to go anyway.
The Unpopular Opinion
Experienced Murray anglers will tell you that a moderate rise — not the catastrophic floods that inundate towns, but the seasonal rises that push water onto the floodplain edges — produces some of the best Murray cod fishing of the year. The logic is straightforward: floodwater carries terrestrial food sources into the river system, cod move onto the flooded margins to exploit them, and you reach fish that have not seen a lure in months.
The unpopular part is that fishing a rising river in brown water from a boat with logs moving through the current is genuinely demanding. You need to know the river, know the structures, and trust your instincts about what is under murky water you cannot see through. Most anglers do not bother. The ones who do often have it to themselves.
What Changes When the River Rises
Water colour goes from clear-green to dark brown. Visibility drops to zero. Current speed increases. Log and debris movement through the run requires constant attention. And fish behaviour changes: cod that spend clear-water months sitting tight against specific structures move more freely onto the flooded edges, and the feeding trigger is active in a way that is different from the cautious daytime feeding of low-water summer fish.
The Method
Work the flooded timber on the margins — the ghost gums and red gums that stand in two metres of water where there was dry ground last week. Large, noisy surface lures worked slowly along the wood edge at dawn produce aggressive strikes from cod that are actively patrolling the edge. The take is different in flood conditions — faster, more committed, less of the tentative follows that characterise clear-water fishing.
On the trip this account is based on: four cod between 55 and 87cm in a single morning session on a section of river between Echuca and Cohuna that I had entirely to myself. The 87cm fish took a large surface popper two metres from the bank in water that was on a red gum's lower branches.
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