size, rather than bigger or smaller. Pilchards are one of my favourite beach baits for winter tailor and salmon and yes, I still use them old style, pinned to a set of ganged hooks! SMALL TUNA I’ll group a few different fish species into
this category, just to make things easier. Bonito are more correctly, part of the mackerel family, but let’s be technically incorrect here for a minute and use old school terms. As far as east coast anglers are concerned, the small tunas are those speedy pelagic fish that are abundant
along the east coast from about January through to late June each year. The main fish in this group are bonito, mack tuna, striped tuna, frigate mackerel and Watson’s bonito. Those anglers into chasing monsters like marlin, larger kingfish, cobia and
This Hunter River bream fell for a bait of freshwater mullet that the author had caught with white bread. In fact, the bream would have also taken a bait of white bread!
Small tuna are great fun to catch and a can be used for bait in a variety of ways to tempt different species. The author likes to cut the fillets into cubes and give them a liberal sprinkling of rock salt. This toughens up the flesh so they’ll last longer on the hook. It’s definitely worth looking into salting techniques if you’re a keen offshore, rock or beach angler who targets snapper and bream.
sharks may consider small tuna as slow trolled live baits or faster trolled skip baits. The majority of rock, beach and inshore anglers though, can use small tuna in the form of freshly cut baits or salted baits for bream, snapper, tailor and a few other species. Small tuna are generally much better when the skin is left on and they are covered
with a liberal sprinkling of rock salt. The salt draws out moisture and toughens up the flesh, without adversely affecting the flavour. So they hold up better to repeated casting or annoying pickers and pests. Good quality freshly salted small tuna are right at the top of the list for bream or snapper around inshore reef and rocky headlands.
BEACH WORMS Although it’s worth learning how to catch beach worms if you live on the coast and have the time and patience, luckily they can also be purchased from good bait shops. Beach worms appeal to most saltwater species, but are particularly effective for whiting and mulloway. They may seem relatively expensive compared to
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