26th Mulwala Classic Invitational 2018

30 April 2018

I RECENTLY fished the Mulwala Classic Invitational and again had a great time. This event is so well organised and run that to participate in it is a absolute pleasure .

Michael Bressnan is the man that pulls all this together, with the help of his hardworking committee.

The competition itself runs from 8 am to 5 pm on both the Friday and Saturday. Fishing in office hour makes it very interesting and challenging as the normal low light conditions that cod love are outside of the competition times.

For the two days of the comp there were 419 cod caught between 120 anglers, which equates to an average of about 1.75 cod per angler per day, and many angler’s don’t get their average…so it can be a long hard day for many.

Spinnerbaits featured amongst many peoples catch’s and swim baits were also high on the list .

Champion angler, Roger Miles who caught sixteen cod, fished two lures for the whole of the comp, one being a swimbait and the other a Jackall Doozer.

The 16 fish that Roger caught in the comp were all taken on the Doozer, which he had modified to some degree.

Derek Blow, who was part of the champion team, had a great capture while fighting a 48 cm cod that was in turn was eaten by a 93 cm cod. Both cod were landed and both swum away so points were awarded for the two fish .

The ‘Dash For Cash’ on Sunday morning this year produced some quality fish over three hours, with two metre plus fish coming in only minutes apart.

Prior to fishing this year’s comp I spent a fair bit of time on Google Earth looking at imagery from 2009 when the lake had been drained. Big lay downs and channels were mapped which helped no end in finding some good logs under the water .

The guys fishing Mulwala on a regular basis nearly all run the Charted Waters program, which uses the same 2009 imagery from Google Earth .

Lures that worked for us included the Edgecrusher spinner bait with Aussie Flag Blades, Gobsmacked Lures, shallow running Snake Baits, Oargee Plow in orange, Storm hard body swimbaits and a Rapala Rip’n’Rap in blue .

The hat rack award , awarded to the one story that receives the most cheers , went to Mick Bence who we shared a cabin with for the past couple of years .

Mick and his mate Bryce made it to the 26th Mulwala Classic one week too early. Apparently a few people told them they had the wrong weekend but they were adamant that they were right.

It wasn’t until arriving at their mates place on the lake they were to discover the comp was indeed a week away. This earn’t Mick the hat rack and prizes worth around $400 .

I think there were about seven anglers that didn’t catch a fish. Peter Cross was one of these and won the Zero Catch award and also received prizes worth around $400.

For more pictures and details about the event, click HERE and HERE.

Below are the statistics from the comp thanks to Michael Bressnan.