Australian lure-fishing specialist Josh Read has used the maiden voyage of a new Alloytec jet punt to push deep into a Murray cod river that local farmers say is running at its lowest level in four decades, landing a string of cod on weedless rigged Ricky the Roach soft plastics including an 81cm trophy fish that ate metres from a deep run.
Fishing solo, Read launched the new boat with the explicit intention of running as far upstream as the jet drive would safely manage, working back through marginal water that would have been unreachable with a propeller setup. The river conditions, he conceded, were genuinely outside his previous reference frame.
"The river is low as I have ever fished it," Read said, "and the old dairy farmer was telling me it's as low as he's ever seen it in 40 years."
The plan was simple — run a kilometre upstream past a heavy rapid, then fish his way back down to the launch with a fan-cast pattern of weedless plastics aimed at log-jam holding cover. The rapid itself, Read admitted, gave him pause every time the jet drive nosed into it.
"I'm still getting used to how shallow this thing can run," he said.
The first fish came almost immediately — a 63cm cod that ate a weedless rigged Ricky the Roach within metres of the first productive corner. Released cleanly, it set the tone for a session that mixed missed strikes, lost fish and clean catches across the afternoon.
The headline event came on day two. After missing a fish on the previous afternoon that he estimated in the 80cm class, Read returned to the same stretch of water with fellow angler Frank and refished the rapid the cod had moved through. The result was a textbook eat.
"That's a better fish," Read said as the rod loaded up. "He's a much better fish. Watch him come out and eat it."
The fish measured 81cm at the brag mat, described by Read as "fat as mud" with the dark colouration typical of cod that live their lives in heavily-structured upper-river runs. It was released after a quick photograph and a clean lift, with Read pointing the boat into the next run almost immediately.
A significant portion of the footage was given over to Read walking through his preferred weedless rigging method. He showed viewers how he scores a long, square slit along the belly of the soft plastic, twists a screw-lock head in true to the lure's centreline and then beds the hook point along the dorsal so that the gape will open cleanly on the strike.
"You want to get nearly through and the idea is that the weedless hook doesn't have as much plastic to poke through," Read said.
He was candid about the limits of his own experience with the technique, suggesting there were probably refinements he was missing, but emphasised that for skinny-water cod work the cleaner profile and reduced snag risk had already paid off in two sessions.
A GoPro and SD-card issue cut the trip short on the first afternoon, with Read driving home to sort the gear before returning the next morning. He flagged the run as a clear endorsement of jet-driven shallow punts as the right tool for low-water Australian native fishing, and as the start of what is shaping up to be an ongoing project around running the new Alloytec further upstream than he has previously been able to take a boat.