Hook, Line & Sinker

HAIL TO THE KING

The north coast of Tasmania is home to the biggest King George Whiting in the world! Hook, Line and Sinker’s Andrew Hart recently revisited his home waters and found things had changed completely!

I grew up fishing the north coast of Tasmania back in the 1990s. Every opportunity we would get we’d be fishing somewhere, usually on one of the jetties or wharfs towards the mouth of the Tamar River. We used to catch plenty of different fish. But we never, ever caught a whiting. Which is weird because nowadays the entire north coast including the Tamar River is absolutely chock-a-block full of one of the tastiest fish that swims: the King George Whiting. And not only are there plenty of whiting, they are the biggest in the world.

That’s not a statement made lightly and it’s not my statement, either. They’re the words of South Australian fishing royalty, Shane Mensforth, who recently visited the state to target these extra-large KGWs!

South Australia is the home of King George Whiting and has been forever and a day, so it’s kind of weird that a fishing journalist like Shane would plan a trip to Tasmania to go whiting fishing. He could have left the whiting-rich waters of the Spencer Gulf to come to the Apple Isle to catch trout, tuna, swordfish or huge bream—things, like serial killers, that South Australians just don’t catch!

Instead, he came to Tasmania to go whiting fishing.

As luck would have it, I heard he was coming so decided to join him for an episode of Hook, Line and Sinker

We even ended up using my boat, the big HLS Bar Crusher 780, which I hitched to my MU-X and towed to the lovely little north coast seaside hamlet of Bridport. The town is an hour north-east of Launceston and gives you good access to Waterhouse Island. That’s where we pointed the big Bar Crusher early one March morning.

Joining us for the trip was Damon ‘The Guru’ Sherriff. The Guru is no stranger to Hook, Line and Sinker and, as a Bridport local, knows plenty of good whiting spots. He is also my cousin and was my partner in crime when it came to fishing the Tamar River all those years ago.

We made the 16km trip along the north coast to Waterhouse Island, probably driving over millions of whiting as we went, but the island is pretty and would make good footage.

The first fish to bite was a huge King George of almost 60cm. Shane caught it and declared that, if caught in South Australia, it would be the fish of a lifetime. Over the next few hours we managed to catch around 10 big whiting about the same length. The biggest we’ve heard of off the north coast is almost 70cm. That’s a silly-size whiting.

Why are they so big? No one really knows. But one thing is for sure, this species wasn’t in the area 20 years ago when I used to fish there with the Guru every chance I got. We didn’t even see a whiting. Now there’s a full-on fishery. So whether it’s a climate change thing or just a natural occurrence, Tassie whiting are now a thing!

The method to catch your Tassie King George Whiting is to fish over a sandy patch of bottom that is surrounded by weed. And all along the coast there are hundreds of square kilometres of such

country. In Tasmania we don’t use berley— you just anchor up, throw your baits into the sand hole and, if the whiting are there, you’ll soon know. If you don’t catch one in the first 10 or 15 minutes, simply pull up the anchor and move to the next spot.

We ended up filming a great episode of the program and, sure enough, Shane was happy to have achieved his mission. Look out for his story in his online magazine South Australian Angler.

A new series of Hook,Lineand Sinker is currently in production and will air later in 2024 on 7Mate. The last series is available to stream on the 7Plus app.