Tailor in Australia

Identification and biology

Tailor is the Australian name for the bluefish of the Atlantic, Pomatomus saltatrix: a blue-green, silver-sided, fork-tailed predator with a mouthful of teeth that shear through a pilchard, a leader or a careless finger. It runs the east coast from Queensland to Victoria and the south-west of Western Australia in schools that follow the baitfish along the beaches, the rock platforms and the estuary mouths, and it spawns on the beaches of K’gari, Fraser Island, in late winter and spring in a run that Queensland manages with a closure of the spawning beaches. It is a fast-growing, fast-living fish, and the “choppers” of a kilogram are the everyday catch while the “greenbacks” of three and four kilograms are the fish of the winter beaches.

Where they live through the year

On the New South Wales coast tailor run the beaches and the rocks from autumn through winter and into spring, at dawn and dusk and after dark, moving up the coast toward the Queensland spawning grounds; the K’gari run peaks in August and September. In summer the smaller fish are in the estuaries and along the beaches in the mornings. In Western Australia the south-west beaches from Perth to the south coast fish through summer and autumn, and the Swan River and the estuaries hold the small ones. Tailor schools are visible: birds working, bait showering, a dark patch moving along a gutter.

The mistakes that cost fish

Fishing through the middle of the day when the schools feed at the change of light; the tailor hour is the half hour either side of sunrise and sunset. Fishing without a wire trace or a heavy leader and losing the metal or the ganged pilchard to the first fish. Casting to the beach instead of the gutter: tailor hunt where the bait is trapped, in the gutter between the bank and the beach and along the edge of the wash off the rocks. And keeping the spawning beaches’ rules in mind on K’gari, where the closure is dated and posted.

Reading the report for tailor

The wind and the swell decide the beaches and the rocks; a moderate onshore sea that stirs the gutters is tailor weather, a flat calm is not. The fishing-times module on each water page shows the dawn and dusk windows and, on the coast, the tide change; the rising tide into dusk is the classic beach session. The species card rates the month; the calendar shows autumn and winter on the east coast and the K’gari run in late winter.

Tackle setups

Playbook by water temperature

The plan the daily report picks for tailor 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 tailor

136 Australia waters carry tailor on their species card, each with a daily report.

Common questions