The 2026 Pirtek Fishing Challenge — Australia's largest one-day charity fishing event — gave Murrumbidgee bank-walker Aus_Outdoor_Nomad two fish, one personal best, and one of the more painful tackle losses any cod angler can remember. He spent three days walking the Bidgee, including a Friday pre-fish, a wedding squeezed into the Saturday night, and an early Sunday-morning grind for what proved to be the headline moment of the weekend.
Conditions were near-perfect. "The river is fishing probably the best it's fished in several years," he reported on the Saturday session. "It's low. It's super clear. The clarity of the river is phenomenal. Couldn't really ask for any better conditions."
The fishing had a sharp early lesson, though. A bite that should have been a fish on the Friday came undone because his drag had loosened while the reel sat on the ground during a bank scramble. "My drag was loose," he said. "That's so frustrating. By no means felt massive. So if there's one lesson to take out of this, it's when you're doing bank walking and you're crawling up banks and stuff and put your reel on the ground, you got to check your drag often enough to make sure it's tight."
A 60cm trout cod on the surface and one Murray cod on a follow-up session set up the Sunday tilt. Then came the moment that turned the weekend. Working the same hole he had been pre-fishing all week, he felt a thump on his Murro Tremor.
"There just has to be something big on this log," he told the camera before the cast. "There can't not be." The fish loaded up. "Oh, that was a good fish. Didn't really feel any weight. That could have been the one fish we were after. Oh yeah, it's a good fish. This could be a PB." The fish proved exactly that — a personal-best Murray cod taken in the back-eddy of a steep edge.
The heartbreak followed. The same Tremor that had landed his PB hung on a log on a later cast and could not be retrieved without a swim he was not prepared to attempt. "I've had that lure forever. Just lost me Tremor. It's not ideal because I caught me PB fishing it this morning. But it's devastating. I'm heartbroken," he said. The Tremor had cost "basically $100" at full RRP, but he had picked it up on sale for $45 in a Complete Angler closing-down clearance.
The gear list was tight. A Tranx 300 paired with a Murro 1- to 5-ounce rod handled the topwater work. A Cod Raider rod and Revo Winch reel covered the subsurface. The new VMC Mustache rig in 14g earned a quiet endorsement after delivering its biggest fish on its first outing.
Final weekend tally: two fish landed, one personal best Murray cod, three days of bank-walking on the Bidgee, one lost premium lure, and a small but useful reminder that on cool, clear, low-flow water with a moon a day past new, even tired legs can still walk into a PB.
