Carl Jocumsen's Intro to Fishing Australia

After a highly-decorated career fishing tournaments in his home country of Australia, Carl Jocumsen pitched everything he knew and traveled to America to try to qualify for and conquer the Bassmaster Elite Series. The Queensland native has fished with B.A.S.S. and FLW since 2011, and last year he celebrated his birthday by winning an Elite Series event on Oklahoma’s Lake Tenkiller.

He seems to have acclimated himself pretty well, even going so far as to marry an American, his lovely wife Kayla. At the same time, his adoption of an American lifestyle by no means represents a renunciation of his heritage and upbringing. He remains a proud product of Australia.

As devoted bass anglers and aspiring world travelers, we couldn’t think of anyone better to discuss Australian fishing opportunities and culture than Carl. He was kind enough to spill the beans. Here are the results of our conversation, unfiltered:

You came to the United States to fish for bass, but there are no largemouth or smallmouth bass in Australia. What species was your first love?

It was definitely the Murray Cod. It’s a native species to Australia that only lives over there and it was local to my area. The cool thing about them is that if you caught a small one, they’re pretty fish even at 5 or 6 pounds, but they grow to over 100 pounds. That was definitely a fish that really intrigued me and got my passion for lure casting fired up. They ate swimbaits. One of the first ones I ever caught on a lure ate a surface lure. It sounded like someone shot my lure. From that day I was done.

I remember five or six of us sleeping in swags. In Australia you just have like a roll-up bed. It’s just a piece of foam with a sleeping bag and a pillow, wrapped in canvas. That’s what we used to sleep on the riverbanks. All my mates were asleep that one morning. I walked about 50 meters from them, cast a topwater in the river and this cod ate the surface lure and it woke everyone up. Everyone went jumping out of their swags and grabbed their rods.

For the American bass angler traveling to Australia, is that the closest thing you have to bass fishing?

One hundred percent. The cod is the closest to bass, that’s why I probably fell in love with the largemouth. They don’t school. They’re way more predatory, more predatory. They’ll stay by a snag and they’ll ambush stuff. It’s very close to largemouth fishing. Same tackle – heavy baitcaster, rods with spinnerbaits, topwaters, swimbaits. You go to these lakes now, the swimbait thing has really taken off over there, they’re getting 60-, 70- or 100-pound fish following glide baits and hitting them in front of them. It’s world-class fishing.

Is that the strongest fish pound-for-pound?

The cod really isn’t about the fight. It’s about the bite and how pretty they are. When you get them on, they’re big, powerful fish. The bigger they are the more powerful they have, but they’re not a hard-fighting fish. The barramundi is the one. When I go back to Australia I have to get my Murray Cod and barramundi fix. They’re the two things where when I’m fishing I have butterflies – I know I’m in a special place and something crazy could happen. That’s what happens when I fish for barramundi and Murray Cod, every time I go I feel like I’ve never caught a fish before. It’s super-special.

Several Americans have come over for barramundi and I’ve been lucky to take quite a few myself and pretty much any American that catches a barramundi goes back like every year after that, or tries to.

Can you experience that action near the major cities or do you have to get away from it to catch them?

Any time you want to go fishing, it’s generally pretty remote. The closest town may be 30 minutes or probably an hour, and it’s usually a tiny, little town with one motel. At the majority you might have to camp, set up a tent. Most of our lakes are away from the cities, so it’s a real adventure when you go for barramundi. The cool thing about barramundi is that they’re northern fish because they need heat. They can’t survive in the south of Australia, and what’s cool is that they live in saltwater and then they go into freshwater to spawn, and then they go back out to the salt. They get landlocked in the lakes and because they don’t have the current and the crocodiles, they’re the ultimate predator, and they just get ginormous. The only way to explain hooking one is going to the highway and throwing your lure at a truck passing by at 100 miles per hour and holding onto the rod. That’s what it feels like when you get a bite and hook up. You have zero control. They do huge jumps. They do everything to get off. They’re ferocious. You use standard bass-size baitcasting rods and reels, 50-pound braid, and a heavier 80- to 100-pound leader. They don’t really have teeth, but they have a rough surface, and they’re so ferocious that when they jump it can rub through that heavy fluorocarbon.

They eat frogs, they eat topwaters, they eat swimbaits, so for an American to go over there it’s very relatable to largemouth fishing, except you hook up and it’s like a 70-pound tarpon in a lake with lily pads.

If an American were to go over there, are there guides or lodges catering to traveling customers?

There are guides at most lakes now, but it’s nothing like over here. I feel like Australia is very bad at promoting how phenomenal our outdoors activities are. On a world-class fishery there might be one guide, maybe two if you’re lucky. The biggest thing I run into over here is that every American I meet who says they want to go to Australia, but they don’t know how to do it. There’s definitely something there that needs to change. It’s not easy, but it is a lot easier to come to America and know what to do, and have people that will show you who do it for a living, they’ll take you around if you just wanted to experience certain things. It’s a little bit harder in Australia. It’s more of a thing where you kind of need to know someone to give you that inside information to get in the right places, but it’s definitely doable.

Is there a region of Australia you haven’t visited yet that you still want to go to?

The northern part of Australia is like Africa. It’s super-remote. It has a wet season where you can’t even be up there for like six months. Every river is full of giant crocodiles. There’s water buffalo. It’s wild. I’ve been to the Cape in the Northern Territories side of things, but the Kimberley on the more northwest coast is some of the most pristine, remote country that you can go to and it’s got all sorts of species including barramundi. You can go up there and fish where fish have never seen a lure or human before. That’s something that’s really cool about Australia, that there’s still so much untouched country just because of how rugged it is.

Is there a species you’ve yet to catch that’s on your bucket list? 

I’ve caught just about everything in Australia. I’ve caught big marlin – black marlin, blue marlin. I’ve caught most of the big saltwater species. I would say that my bucket list is a meter Murray Cod on topwater. That is like a bit of a pinnacle for a lot of people and very hard to do. I’ve caught meter-ten, meter-fifteen, 60- an 70-pound Murray Cod on spinnerbaits and all sorts of lures, but to catch one that size on a topwater takes a lot of time and effort and knowledge to do it. That’s something that I just haven’t done yet.

What about tackle shopping? Is there the equivalent of a Bass Pro Shops or Tackle Warehouse or even great regional shops there?

My cousin owns Fish n Bits tackle store in my hometown of Toowoomba. It’s like one of those little specialty stores that you walk into and they have all of the good stuff. Australia has always been ahead of the US in Japanese baits, so we had Jackall and Megabass. When I came over here in 2010, that was kind of just starting. I had that for 10 years in Australia. Our fish can be very finicky and more finessey, so the Japanese baits were way more popular. We have really good stores of high-end Japanese stuff, all sorts of stuff.

We have BCF, which is like a big camping and fishing store, only in the big cities and the bigger towns, and then we have MOTackle, which is a big online store.

What about tackle manufacturing? Are there companies over there we should be aware of?

That’s where Bassman originated from. They’re the number one selling spinnerbait in Australia. They’re in every single tackle store, Australia-wide. They’ve got an amazing story. When I was like 15 or 16 and I’d go to the tournaments they’d have a bus and you would go in and it was lined side to side with everything you could ever imagine for spinnerbaits. You would actually go in there and build your ultimate spinnerbait at the actual tournament. They’ve gone from that to building them in a little shop to now being into America. Their lures are something you definitely want to go toward when you’re fishing for Murray Cod or barra, and a few of those bigger species because the Aussies custom-design bigger stuff for that market.

There’s also Millerods. They’re Australian-made, Australian-designed. Now they’re coming to the US. They’re kind of the same thing – a specialty rod, only in specialty stores, but you’re able to find them in most of your good stores around Australia.

Last question: When someone goes over on their ultimate fishing trip to Australia, what is the one food they have to try?

An Aussie meat pie. It’s one of those things where you can get a really good one, and you can get a really bad one, and it’s also one of those things where you’re either going to love it or you’re going to hate it. They’re so different, they just don’t have them over here, but every servo (or gas station) or bakery will have every different savory flavored pie you can think of – if we can put it in pastry it’s going to be in there. You get curry pies and peas and breakfast ones. Usually you buy one and put tomato sauce on top of it and you start biting into it. That’s about as Aussie as you can get.