“I couldn’t believe it, I knew I had a massive fish when I grabbed the rod,” he said.
Unprepared for this twist of fate while celebrating the 50th birthday of his mother, Dion Leeder, aboard a houseboat on the Murray at Echuca, Mr Leeder was left to reel in the beast on a 12-pound line and small hook totally unsuited to the task.
“My heart was just racing,” he said.
“When I saw it I was just praying that it didn’t come off or snap the line.”
The Shepparton man kept up the fight for nearly 10 minutes in constant fear he would lose the catch of a lifetime.
But Mr Leeder has been fishing on the Goulburn and Murray rivers since he was a minnow himself, and instinctively rose to the challenge of balancing the power of the fish with the limitations of his equipment.
And when the 110cm Murray cod first breached the water, Mr Leeder and his family couldn’t believe their eyes.
The biggest fish Mr Leeder had caught before was around 70cm, and this 110cm behemoth knocked that record out of the park.
“It was on the first night of the trip, which just made the whole weekend,” he said.
“People spend their whole lives trying to catch a fish like that.”
Mr Leeder has received calls from friends congratulating him, with perhaps a touch of envy among the avid fishermen.
If the fish had made it off the hook, Mr Leeder admitted the 110cm probably would have been closer to 200cm.
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