Also known as Australian Salmon, Sea Trout, Kōwhai, Black-back Salmon. Bait, technique, tide windows, and where the bite is on right now.
Kahawai — Pound for pound, the hardest-pulling fish in the Gulf. Also called Australian Salmon, Sea Trout, Kōwhai, Black-back Salmon.
Kahawai is also known as: Australian Salmon, Sea Trout, Kōwhai, Black-back Salmon. Pound for pound, the hardest-pulling fish in the Gulf.
Regional names can confuse anglers and cause misidentification. The table of common names below covers the most-used alternatives across Australia, New Zealand and the US:
Key to correct identification: check the regulations-authority species sheet for your state or territory before keeping any fish — minimum legal sizes, bag limits and identification guides are published by each fisheries department and are the authoritative source.
Hero spots in our coverage where Kahawai is in season for June. Click through for the live forecast.
Find the birds and you've found the kahawai — work-ups of gannets and terns over surface-feeding schools are the dead giveaway across the Hauraki Gulf and Bay of Plenty through summer and autumn. Idle up-current of the bust-up, cut the motor, and cast a metal slug or small stickbait beyond the school, then rip it back fast and erratic; they'll hammer a lure moving at pace far harder than a slow one. If the school sounds and you can still mark them, drop a slug and let it flutter, or troll a bibbed minnow at 4-6 knots along the edge of the workup to stay on fish without spooking them. Off the rocks and around harbour entrances like Manukau and the Tamaki Strait, a live jack mackerel or pilchard fished under a float in the wash is reliable. They have soft mouths and run hard, so keep the drag moderate and the rod loaded — and bleed them straight away, because kahawai are a far better feed (and superb smoked or as cut bait) when bled on capture.
Kahawai are current-feeders, so the run of the tide matters more than its height. The best windows are the first couple of hours of a building tide and the last of the run-out, when bait gets funnelled around points, harbour mouths and channel edges — the Rangitoto Channel, the Noises and the Manukau and Kaipara entrances all fire on moving water. Slack water typically kills the bite; the schools scatter and the workups fold up until the current picks back up. Around the rocks, fish the stage of tide that pushes whitewater and bait onto the platform.
Kahawai aren't strongly moon-locked the way a snapper run can be — what drives them is bait, current and bird activity far more than the lunar phase. That said, the bigger tides around the new and full moon move more water and concentrate baitfish, which can sharpen the workups, and the major/minor solunar peaks are as good a time as any to be on the water if the birds are up. Don't pass up a flat, baitless full-moon day in favour of a windy quarter-moon morning with gannets diving — read the water and the birds first, the calendar second.
Kahawai are managed under New Zealand's recreational rules, which set a daily bag limit and (in the Auckland & Kermadec area) form part of a combined finfish limit; there's no minimum legal size at the time of writing but that can change. NZ limits are area-based and revised periodically, so check the current Fisheries New Zealand rules (or the NZ Fishing Rules app) for the exact area you're fishing before you keep a feed. In Australia kahawai are the same fish as 'Australian salmon' and each state sets its own bag and size limits — confirm the local rules if you're fishing across the Tasman.
NZ size & bag limits for Kahawai — Auckland & Kermadec area, verified →
Olli-Mikael Vaittinen has fished his whole life. Fifteen years of fly fishing, guiding seasons on Norway's Lakselva — his favourite Atlantic salmon river — and a blue marlin landed in Vava'u, Tonga. Founder of Fishare — the app that puts the data behind the decisions every angler makes on the water.
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