Australian salmon in Australia

Identification and biology

The Australian salmon is not a salmon at all but a perch-like schooling fish, Arripis trutta on the east coast and Arripis truttaceus in the west, silver-green with a scatter of dark spots on the back, a forked tail and a habit of running the southern beaches in schools that turn the water dark. It is the everyday fish of the cooler coast from New South Wales round the south to Western Australia and Tasmania: a hard fighter, an easy fish for a family on a beach, and a fish whose flesh is better bled and iced at once than most anglers give it credit for. The Status of Australian Fish Stocks reports give both species a life of about 12 years, with the eastern fish reaching 81 cm fork length and maturing at 2 to 4 years, and the western fish reaching 96 cm, the females maturing at about three and a half years. The small fish of the bays and estuaries are the “salmon trout” of the southern states.

Where they live through the year

In winter and spring the salmon are on the surf beaches, the rock platforms and the bay edges of Victoria, South Australia, Tasmania and the southern coast of Western Australia, and on the New South Wales south coast beaches; the schools work the gutters at dawn and dusk and often through the day when the sea is up. Through summer they are still on the beaches of the far south and in Tasmania, and the small salmon trout fill the estuaries and the bay shallows everywhere. In Western Australia the fishery turns on what DPIRD calls the annual autumn salmon run, taken mostly from the south coast beaches by anglers and beach seine crews, with the schools moving along the coast toward the south-west.

The mistakes that cost fish

Casting where the school was rather than where it is going: salmon move along a beach and the angler who walks with them stays on fish. Fishing a metal too slowly, when a fast retrieve is what triggers the school, or fishing bait without a running sinker to keep it in the gutter. Keeping more than the bag or under the size, which differ by state; in Western Australia the rules site sets a 30 cm minimum and a bag of four. And, for the table, not bleeding and icing the fish on the sand, which is the difference between a good fish and a poor one.

Reading the report for salmon

The wind and the swell decide it: a moderate sea that stirs the gutters and a wind that does not close the beach. The fishing-times module shows the dawn and dusk windows and the tide; the rising tide into the change of light is the beach session. The species card rates the month; the calendar shows winter and spring in the south-east and the autumn run in the west.

Tackle setups

Playbook by water temperature

The plan the daily report picks for australian salmon in each band; the water temperature on each page is a seasonal estimate for its type of water and says so.

Month by month

Activity for the southern year, 1 slow to 5 peak; January is midsummer. Current month highlighted.

Waters we cover for australian salmon

88 Australia waters carry australian salmon on their species card, each with a daily report.

Common questions