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Tips for Targeting Tailor

By Justin Willmer

Those crisp mornings, that make it a little harder to get out of bed, also signal the run north of a favourite species for recreational anglers, the aggressive feeding and hard fighting tailor. Schools of tailor cruise up the coast, terrorising schools of bait along our beaches, headlands and into the mouths of rivers and estuaries. The arrival of this species in numbers often triggers an influx of anglers to popular tailor spots, where they stand shoulder to shoulder, rods loaded as the tailor move within casting range.

For most of my life I have caught tailor in winter, from sessions in the local rivers and estuaries to an annual pilgrimage to Fraser Island, where I have witnessed hundreds of 4WDs lined up on the beach and even larger numbers of anglers lining the shoreline, launching gang-rigged pilchards toward the outer bank and into the deep gutter that is holding large schools of hungry tailor. On the East coast these fish migrate up the northern NSW coast to the northern tip of Fraser Island for spawning, while in WA they are believed to have multiple localised spawning sites that see them spread along the coast, with some genuine giants caught throughout the season. Not just an Australian species either, tailor can be found in other parts of the world, including the USA (bluefish) and South Africa (elf).

Once you locate schools of tailor it is possible to catch them in large numbers and thankfully bag limits and more sustainable fishing practices have seen the passing of the days when anglers filled freezers, ensuring plenty of tailor for future generations to enjoy. When caught tailor should be well bled and then stored in an ice slurry, then best eaten fresh or a few fillets vacuum sealed for future meals. Even though tailor aren’t considered a prize table fish, due to their stronger tasting and oilier flesh, it’s hard to beat a fresh feed of tailor on the BBQ or from the smoker.

Locating Tailor

Even though tailor can turn up anywhere they seem to favour the deeper channels and mouths of rivers and estuaries, especially where there is plenty of bait and water movement. Outside of these systems they are commonly encountered in deeper surf gutters, areas of wash and water movement and around headlands. Apart from spotting the dark schools of fish in the water, you can also look for the 3B’s – bait, birds and bust ups.

Find the schools of bait and you will often find the fish feeding around them. I will often follow a school of bait when fishing the beach, making plenty of prospecting casts, just waiting for the tailor to find the bait and all hell to break loose. If there are birds in the area it can be a positive sign that there are fish and bait in the area. Keep an eye out for birds flying over the water that look like they are watching something and if they start feeding on bait pushed to the surface it means that there are often schools of fish underneath doing the pushing, so get a cast in there. Finally, if you see the fish actively busting up or ‘chopping’ the surface as they feed, this is the ultimate time to get a bait or lure in amongst them.

Bait Fishing

Bait fishing for tailor is very popular and it’s hard to go past a whole fish bait, such as a pilchard, gar, or yellowtail pike on a ganged rig, with another good option being a flesh bait, such as a strip or slab of bonito, gar, mullet, yellowtail pike and similar. Rod and reel selection will come down to location and environment being fished, with shorter combos popular in the boat, growing in length as the surf and casting distances required become larger for landbased anglers. Combos used for snapper and flathead are popular for tailor when fishing in the boat, while a dedicated surf combo is popular landbased, commonly ranging from 10' – 13’, with a large spinning reel, such as the Okuma Rockaway or Surf-8K.

Lure Fishing

Being such an aggressive predator, armed with a mouthful of teeth and a large appetite, lures are an extremely effective option for tailor and this has been my primary method of targeting them over the last few decades. Before we get into my favourite lures for fishing for tailor, here’s 5 tips for targeting tailor.

Time Your Session – Tailor are creatures of habit, and they will often be found returning to the same areas each year, timed around different variables. By timing your session with productive times of year, tides, moon phases and so forth, you can dramatically increase your catch rate. Keeping a bit of a diary of dates, moon phases, tides, location, lures, etc., can assist, as can simply looking back at the dates and locations of photos that you may have taken while fishing. Over time we have built up a good understanding of when to start fishing for them and areas that are best fished at different stages of the tide. Beach fishing around the full and new moon can produce some of the most productive sessions and some quality fish.

Match the Hatch – When it comes to lure selection, matching the bait in the area is a good starting point. This can include the size of the bait and colour of the bait (even as subtle as black back or green back), while also including how the bait is moving in the water. It’s important to pay attention to what is going on around you when fishing and noting what bait is common in the area and how it behaves.

Plan Your Attack – If you start spraying random casts over and around the school it can change the behaviour of the fish, especially if you are working lures aggressively. This is especially important if there is a few of you all casting at once. Take the time to plan your attack first, such as working the lefthand edge of the school, while also potentially casting at the same time to create a frenzied feeding where a few fish will break away from the school and come after all the lures at once.

Spraying casts all over the school can rapidly shut the school down or break it up at times, both of which mean less action for the angler. It can be difficult at times to stop everyone just going crazy and spraying casts, especially when the fish are busting up, however it can keep the school feeding for longer and feeding more aggressively. It’s often a good idea to plan your attack when fishing schools of fish, fish busting up and even when approaching and working structure, even when targeting other species.

Lead the School – Leading on from planning the attack is to lead the school if it is on the move. Basically, it is ideal to get ahead of a moving school and make a cast ahead of and out past the school so that your lure intercepts the school on the retrieve. If you cast at the back of the school, it can speed up their movement along the beach and I have also found that if I do hook up the fish are often the smaller fish in the school. By casting to the front of the school you will often hook the larger fish in the school, while also potentially slowing or stopping the school to allow a few more casts and hopefully a few more fish.

Vary the Retrieve – I would also say vary the lure here if they’re not biting. It’s amazing though how many times a slight change in retrieve will get the bite, especially if you’ve already landed a few out of the school, or they’re following the lure and not eating. With a metal lure this could mean a change from a fast skip across the top, to a slightly slower retrieve sub-surface or a burn and kill (a few fast winds and a pause, repeated). When casting a popper, it may be switching from large punches and pops of the lure to a more subtle twitch across the top.

A memorable morning for myself and my wife Sheri involved walking along the beach and following a school, while peppering them with ZMan 3” MinnowZ. We would catch a few on a burn (fast wind), then they would shut down and we would switch to a burn and kill (a few winds and a pause, repeated), then they would shut down on that and we would switch to a slow roll (slow wind). By rotating through these three retrieves, we managed to keep them biting and land about twenty fish from the school as we followed it down the beach.

My 5 Go-To Tailor Lures

You may be able to carry a stack of lures with you in a vehicle or boat, however when I am walking the beach and I am restricted to what I can carry, I would ensure that these five lures are in the tackle binder, or more likely a few of each.

Metal Lure – Referred to by different names, such as slug, chomie, metal and more, the metal lure basically consists of a piece of metal, often shaped like a baitfish, that has an attachment point at the front to tie to and a treble attached on the rear with a spilt ring. Metal lures are popular because they are inexpensive, cast a long way, even in the wind, and they catch fish. They are generally fished with a steady to fast retrieve, to imitate a fleeing baitfish. The TT Hard Core has been an excellent producer and I generally fish it on light to medium spin gear, casting the 20g on a 7’ 3-6kg spin rod and 2500 size reel, loaded with 10lb braid and 20lb leader. The 30g and 40g models I generally step up to a 9’ spin rod around 5-10kg, with a 4000 size spin reel, loaded with 20lb braid and 20-40lb leader. There are also larger metals for casting on longer rods in heavy surf.

Stickbait – When the metal is too aggressive and spooking the fish, a switch to a Fish Inc. Flanker sinking stickbait will net results. This heavy-duty ABS stickbait is available in an Flanker 85mm Sinking Stickbait, 19g model and larger Flanker 115mm Sinking Stickbait, 28g model. They are extremely realistic looking, cast long, can be fished with a wide variety of retrieves, and get eaten. Try working these fast, on a steady retrieve, with a burn and kill, and with a sweep of the rod tip followed by a pause. Plenty of other fish species love eating these as well, including mackerel, tuna, queenfish and trevally.

Popper – When the fish are super aggressive a popper can entice some brutal surface strikes. Early morning and late afternoon can be most productive when trying to entice a surface bite and for me there is only one popper built for the job, the Fish Inc. Fly Half 80mm Popper. Small but fearless, this heavy-duty popper is strong, has good weight for casting and an excellent range of colours, including my go-to Tidal Form. Again, mix up the retrieves from a brutal bloop to more subtle splashes on the surface until you find the retrieve draws the strikes.

Soft Plastics – In recent years the soft plastics have produced more tailor than any other lure, especially as the beaches get busier and the fish more heavily pressured. If they aren’t eating other presentations throw a plastic was my theory, until they started to catch consistently and have now become my confidence lure. ZMan 10X Tough ElaZtech plastics are the go as they stand up much better to the teeth and we commonly catch 20+ fish on a single plastic, which is pretty good value.

First plastic out of the pack is a ZMan 3” MinnowZ, a universal baitfish profile that appeals to an incredible number of species around the country. You can fish this plastic fast for a tailor, then slow it down as you approach the edge of the drop off and hop it for a flathead… super versatile. To generate enough casting distance and control the plastic in surf, I rig the 3” MinnowZ on a 1/2oz 3/0 TT HeadlockZ HD jighead. As mentioned earlier, mix up the retrieves until you switch on the bite.

The second plastic would have been hands down the ZMan 5” Scented Jerk ShadZ, that was until the ZMan 5” DieZel MinnowZ came along… now I would have a packet of each. These serve different purposes in that the Scented Jerk ShadZ has almost no built-in tail action, meaning reduced drag for long casts in wind and excellent action for a fast, twitchy, and erratic retrieve. The DieZel MinnowZ, being a paddle tail, does not quite cast as long, however it allows you to fish slower and utilise more of the retrieves used on the smaller MinnowZ, which seems to catch a lot more mulloway, trevally and queenfish from amongst the tailor schools. I generally fish these on a 1oz 6/0 TT HeadlockZ jighead, so you need a combo capable of handling the lure weight. These larger plastics generally get tied on for larger and more aggressive surf, along with sessions when I am faced with strong winds,

Colour wise natural colours excel in the generally clear waters of the surf, while darker colours can be utilised in river and estuary environments. On the beach I have had great success on colours such as Pearl Blue Glimmer, Opening Night, Pearl, Bad Shad and Green Lantern.

Accessories

When you are gearing up to chase a tailor there are a few handy accessories that will make your fishing safer and more enjoyable. A decent pair of polarised sunnies protect your eyes from the sun and flying lures, while also allowing you to spot bait, birds, structure, and fish more effectively. Take some time to learn to look through the waves as if you are looking at the bottom, rather than looking at the waves. This may sound strange however I have often pointed out fish to people and they can’t see them, then I say look through the wave at the bottom, not at the surface. Their head almost blows off and suddenly they are seeing fish in the waves. I guess it’s a little like those puzzles we stare at and then eventually we can see what is hidden in there. Sometimes it is also easier to spot the shadow of a moving school or individual fish, rather than see the fish with their scales that are designed to reflect their environment.

The other accessory that you must carry is a pair of pliers, especially if you tie on any lure that has a treble fitted. Tailor are aggressive and will thrash around when landed, so you do not want your hands anywhere near that lure until it is removed from the fish. This is another reason I am a massive fan of fishing soft plastics, especially in the kayak as I can grab the head of the jghead to control the fish and I am only dealing with one single hook.

I hope the information that I have outlined here assists you in finding and getting hooked up to a few of these hard pulling and aggressive sportfish. I have so many great memories based around tailor fishing and especially on the beaches, chasing schools of fish, catching them on different presentations, breaking PBs and helping loads of other anglers get hooked on these fun and frenzied sessions. Enjoy the journey.

See you on the water…
Cheers, Justin