Australian Salmon are wild caught in coastal waters, often adjacent to estuaries and off coastal beaches, they are common in large schools with the juveniles often in coastal bays such as Snapper, Mackerel and Trevally, in all southern waters of Australia, particularly Eastern Victoria and Southern NSW. While commercial landings are at historically high levels, Australian Salmon are also a popular recreational species and the recreational catch is significant but not especially popular with consumers, as much of the catch gets used for pet-food or bait. It has a Robust body with one continuous dorsal fin, body colour varies from greyish green to steely blue, usually with yellow to dark spots, and a silver underbelly – growing maximum of 6 kg in weight with a length of up to 90 cm.

The Night

“””It was a lucky night for me to have landed this beautiful Salmon measuring almost up to 50cm in length. It was humid, low tide, clear skies with temperatures of 28 degree in the Botanical Gardens, Sydney NSW Australia. While i was targeting for Mulloway ( Jewfish ), this beast took that drag and ran like it was late for school, the rod almost went flying while the noise of that drag made me jump out of my seat and gave it a nice strike thinking “here we go, another monster Mulloway”. As i was fighting with the fish, reeling it in i felt that it wasn’t as heavy as i expected and the “head shakes” didn’t feel right for the species i was targeting, it felt like it was swimming towards me with very little fight other than going left to right – right to left. As it was getting closer, i had alot of tourists around me watching the action, so i wanted to keep it on the low and somehow land it in a easy, non-chaotic way. Of coarse that exact night my landing net was broken in transportation, so i had no choice but to use the rods power to bounce the fish from the water to the shore. It was heavy and at the time i couldn’t get a proper glance at the fish to see what it was, thinking it was a monster Taylor, until it dropped on the ground with the hook just about to fall off its mouth. I quickly grabbed the measuring mat, as i wanted to release the fish as soon as possible just in case it was undersize but measured at a whopping 50 chunky cm. I decided to release this beauty to fight another day but let me tell you it was alot of fun and i’m sure it would have tasted very nice for some people.

Gear Setup & Bait

My Setup was the Diawa Sandstorm 12ft rod, paired with the Penn 950 SW classic reel. As usual on most of my setups i run a 30 pound braid or mono main line with a sliding sinker, size depending on the current and location. 1.2m main leader being 80 pound by Black Magic, i always like to use a double hook rig when chasing Mulloway or Kingfish, as i like to use live bait, butterflied yakka, squid & few others. This time I had filleted 2 sides of a yellowtail and put a fillet on each hook which did the damage.”””

The Australian Salmon have a strong flavour and quite oily flesh, so make sure you understand how to cook them before targeting them for dinner.

Angler: Sarks