With the one exception of Victoria’s Lake Eildon, which is kept open year-round with farmed stocks of Murray Cod, Victoria places a total ban on cod fishing during their breeding season from the 1st of September to the 30th of November each year.  99.6 per cent of Lake Eildon’s Murray Cod is farmed stock, topped up annually, to support the year-round open season for Australia’s largest fresh water fish.   Renown for its aggressive and highly territorial behaviour, the Murray Cod eats almost anything that gets in its way. Even eating adult ducks, cormorants, freshwater turtles, water dragons, snakes, mice and frogs, and earning them a reputation as ‘pigs of the waterways’. One of the most common stories comes from Ngarrindjeri lands of the lower Murray Darling system, close to the mouth of the Murray in South Australia. It concerns Ponde or Pondi, a giant ancestral cod. The great hunter, Ngurunderi, chased Ponde who formed the bends and billabongs of the Murray with his thrashing tail trying to escape Ngurunderi. Ngurunderi finally speared Ponde at Lake Alexandrina, where Ponde was cut up with his carcass and excess flesh thrown back into the water. These pieces then became other Murray River fish species. Ngurunderi commanded of the pieces to remain as the Murray cod. Thus we will never again see a giant Cod the size of Ponde that is able to carve out an entire river. Â
