Species guide · Nocturnal estuary-and-beach ghost — the patience fish

Mulloway fishing guide.

Also known as Jewfish, Jewie, Silver Ghost, Butterfish (juveniles). Bait, technique, tide windows, and where the bite is on right now.

Where the Mulloway bite is on right now

Hero spots in our coverage where Mulloway is in season for May. Click through for the live forecast.

1 Gold Coast · Gold Coast, QLD · Australia QLD-SE 2 Brisbane · Brisbane, QLD · Australia QLD-SE 3 Perth · Fremantle · Perth, WA · Australia WA-SW 4 Sydney Harbour · Sydney, NSW · Australia NSW 5 Manly Beach · Sydney, NSW · Australia NSW 6 Bondi Beach · Sydney, NSW · Australia NSW 7 Cronulla · Sydney, NSW · Australia NSW 8 Wollongong · Wollongong, NSW · Australia NSW

Best bait

Best lures

Technique

Estuary: cast big soft vibes (Samaki Vibelicious is the NSW gold standard) at deep holes, bridge pylons and rock wall corners on a slow lift-pause-drop retrieve. Most jewies hit on the drop. Beach: anchor a big fresh bait on a paternoster rig in a gutter at night, sit still, wait — the bite is unmistakable, a slow heavy nod-nod-NOD. Patience is the entire game with mulloway. One bite a night on a good night is normal.

Tide windows that matter

Mulloway are textbook tide-change feeders. The last hour of the tide turning and the first hour of the new direction is the window. In rivers, the bottom of the tide is when they pull into the deepest holes to wait out the slack. On beaches, fish the rising tide into a deep gutter at night.

Moon & solunar

Big mulloway are notoriously linked to the dark of the moon — the three or four nights either side of the new moon, particularly when matched with cloudy nights and a small swell on the beach. Full-moon bright nights tend to shut the bigger fish down (or push them deeper). Solunar minor at the tide change beats solunar major at slack water.

Regulations

NSW: 70 cm, bag of 2. QLD: 75 cm, bag of 2. WA: 50 cm (Mulloway in WA is "mulloway" or sometimes confused with "kingfish (mulloway)"), bag of 2 north of 26°30'S. Always verify at NSW DPI Fisheries / DPIRD WA. Big mulloway 1.3 m+ are 20-30 year-old fish — release them where you can.

What ~2.2K real catches show

From our training corpus of ~1.1M angler-logged catches across 14 regions. Last refreshed 2026-05-14.

Top fishing methods

1 Bottom fishing 42%
2 Casting 37%
3 Surfcasting 7%
4 Free line 4%
5 Jig fishing 3%

Peak month

JAN
FEB
MAR
APR
MAY
JUN
JUL
AUG
SEP
OCT
NOV
DEC

Peak hour of day

12a
3a
6a
9a
12p
3p
6p
9p

Top water bodies

Conditions when caught (median & middle-50%)

Water temp
21°C
middle 50%: 19.4–22.9°C
Wind
3 m/s
middle 50%: 2–4.1 m/s
Swell
0.8 m
middle 50%: 0.5–1.2 m
Pressure
1014 hPa
middle 50%: 1008.8–1018.5 hPa
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