Australian lure angler and YouTube creator Colby Lesko has dedicated the latest instalment of his 'Let's Go Fishing' Lake Guide Series to Copeton Dam, booking a Holiday Park cabin for five nights alongside his brother Jackson to give viewers a ground-up primer on one of New South Wales' most celebrated Murray cod fisheries.
Lesko made no secret of where the dam sits in his personal rankings, telling the camera on arrival that he was at "one of my favorite Murray cod dams in Australia, if not my number one favorite Murray cod dam in Australia." After an 11-hour drive from home, the pair arrived at five in the afternoon and launched for a short evening look around, resisting the temptation to fish late into the night and saving the serious effort for first light.
The first session produced a scare more than a fish, with one cod tracking Jackson's surface paddler boat-side and refusing to commit. "How did he not eat that?" an incredulous Lesko asks his brother on camera. "He just got fully up it." A subsequent cod fouled itself on a tangled leader. The evening was eventually saved on a fly jig, with Lesko landing a near-metre fish in the last minutes of light — "probably just short of the meter, but absolutely awesome fish to start the trip off."
The following morning highlighted the grind that defines impoundment cod fishing. Lesko was out of the cabin at 4:15 a.m., only to find first light arrived earlier than expected and the transition bite had already passed. "It's been a tough morning this morning. We've had a heap of really good follows, like fish vertical on the lure, but just zero bites," he said. Persistence eventually converted to a swim-jig fish before Jackson added another on a DS60 Reic while casting an edge for yellowbelly.
With the camera pointed at the lake itself, Lesko walked viewers through Copeton's signature features. He noted the dam is loaded with both big cod and yellowbelly, carries around a metre and a half of visibility in the main basin, and develops significant weed growth when water levels sit steady — something that has been absent during the current high-water period.
He was more cautious on the lake's surface-lure reputation, acknowledging the dam's historic pedigree while conceding that the topwater bite has softened in recent years. "I've caught some monsters here myself on the surface lures for Murray cod — definitely years ago when there was a lot of weed in the lake, it produced some amazing amazing surface fishing," he said. He wondered aloud whether forward-facing sonar and the splash patterns of cast lures had changed fish behaviour, or whether recent conditions simply hadn't lined up, but insisted Copeton remains a credible surface fishery in colder windows when water temperatures drop.
Lesko also noted the live-scope picture across the trip's first day showed roughly 30 'big fish' cruising the upper dam, even if converting them into bites proved difficult. Flooded timber and submerged spinifex complicated the forward-facing sonar read, he added, suggesting a mixed approach of casting and sonar-assisted targeting was more effective than pure live-scoping in the current state of the impoundment.
The series is pitched squarely at anglers planning a first trip to Copeton, with Lesko saying he intends to cover his favoured areas, rigs and techniques across the five-night stay — the kind of long-form local knowledge typically reserved for paid guides.