Day 110 - Merbein. Firstly sorry the photos aren't all that flash.Tuesday is my brother Mick's play up day, so he invited me to go fishing with him and his son in law Matt in the mighty Murray River. Matt picked me up in his new ute (very nice it is too) with his boat attached. As you can see from the photo on the left, the Murray River is an impressive site, at Merbein it's roughly a 100 metres plus in width and can be up to 5-6 metres deep.

Whilst Mick went fishing for bait, Matt and I headed out to do a bit a trawling with lures. After about 30 minutes we were just getting ready to go back when Matt caught a fish. It soon became pretty obvious that it was a Murray Cod, Matt was excited as it was the first he had ever hooked. We got it to the surface, but the landing net wasn't in the boat, I will pick up by the mouth said Matt, the sharp teeth quickly put paid to that idea. We had some pliers, so we decided to use those, its simple you grab the bottom jaw with the pliers. I had the pliers, but the little bastard wouldn't open his mouth. I'm thinking that we are going to lose him and Matt will have the shits big time. Just in time he opened his mouth, I grabbed his bottom jaw in the pliers and we hauled him into the boat. Matt is excited as it's the first cod he has ever caught, I'm excited as it's the first one I ever seen caught, Matt removed the lure and the first photo below shows the proud hunter with his prey.

We charged back to Mick to show him, he would never have believed us if we hadn't shown him the fish. When I mean charged you should see how fast a 40-horse power Mercury outboard can push Matt's boat through the water. The next photo is Mick getting his picture taken with fish. With all the photos taken we released the fish back to river. The next half an hour was spent with Matt using his newly found bragging rights to make phone calls and text people so that they would know that he was now the "man".

We did a bit more fishing, including some bait fishing with the boat tied up to a snag. Mick managed to catch a just legal Silver Perch, but that was it for the day. The next photo shows Mick and I giving Matt a hand to get his boat out of the water (note the new Ute).