Lake Mulwala's Teams Fishing Australia comp is one of the most distinctive scoring formats in Australian freshwater fishing. The brief is brutally simple — five Murray cod, five golden perch, no bait, all on artificials, combined centimetres for placing — and over three days in early May 2026, 35 boats took it on for a $10,000 first prize that paid down to eighth place.
Wildman 'The Fisherman' and his fishing partner Steve, working out of a single boat, walked away with 15th. The path to that finish makes the format come alive.
"Welcome. Wildman the Fisherman here," he told viewers in the opening. "We're up here fishing the Teams Fishing Australia comp at Cod's Country, Lake Mulwala. Different comp this one — you've got to get five yellowbelly, five cod. Then your combined centimetres has been measured up and the highest wins the big cash of 10 grand down to eighth prize. Any lure you can use, you can troll. No bait fishing."
Day one was a single-fish disaster.
"Started off really bad. We only got the one fish on the first day and we were about 32nd or 33rd," he said.
Day two was the climb. The boat got into a pocket of cod and started loading the bag, working their way through five legal cod first.
"Had a good day on the second day. We managed three yellas. As you know, we got to get five yellas, five cod. We got the rest of our cod. So we were up with the cod, but we just had to get yellers — and then it was upgrade."
"Beautiful 51 cm yellow on the ZX40 again," Wildman said over one fish. "Look at that beautiful fish. Look at them tiny hooks. That's it."
The ZX40 is small enough that anglers used to chasing cod with full-size spinnerbaits and bibless hard bodies often dismiss it as a yellowbelly-only tool. The Mulwala session showed exactly why that view sells the lure short — Wildman pulled both species on it, repeatedly, in front of the camera.
"Bloody good little lures," he said after one back-to-back hook-up. "Tiny little hooks. Just teabagging him up and down."
Steve's contribution was anchored by a 60 cm cod on a black-grub stinger setup and a string of clean yellas in the 45 to 58 cm range — fish that, in the centimetres-aggregated scoring, were the difference between placing and another year on the wrong side of the cut.
"Nose tail — 58. Beautiful. Now for the release," Wildman said over Steve's biggest yellow.
The final-day climb was driven by two yellas in the morning and a 57 cm cod off Steve's rod that locked the upgrade in.
"Today we got our two yellers on the last day in the morning. We got another 57 cod. Steve got that, kind of put us back up there, and we ended up finishing 15th position. So we're happy with that. We end up finishing 15th with a bad day."
The broader takeaway for any boat thinking about jumping into a Mulwala teams comp in 2027 — and there are likely to be more, with Teams Fishing Australia rolling out the format aggressively across native waters — is that the small-vibe game is now a primary tool, not a fall-back. Five legal cod and five legal yellowbelly inside three days is achievable on a ZX40 and a black grub plastic without ever swapping to a full cod spinnerbait.
"Couple of good meals — and once of all, it was with friends. So it was a good weekend."