Also known as Reddie, Government Bream. Bait, technique, tide windows, and where the bite is on right now.
Hero spots in our coverage where Red Emperor is in season for May. Click through for the live forecast.
Out of season across our covered spots in May. Check back in August.
Drift or anchor over deep reef in 40–120 m and drop heavy paternoster rigs with twin 8/0 hooks baited with whole squid or strip baits. Most reds come up from the bottom or just above — fish the bottom 5 metres of the water column. Modern slow-pitch and knife-jigging is increasingly productive in 60–120 m once you find the right structure. Big reds (10 kg+) are wary of large boats — drift presentations beat anchored ones for trophies.
Slack tide windows are better than peak current in deep water — when the current rips hard, getting baits or jigs to the bottom in 80+ m of water becomes impractical. Aim for the slack period either side of low or high tide, and the first hour after the slack as the current starts to build.
Red emperor have minimal documented moon dependence — they're deep-water dwellers where moon-driven surface effects matter less. The bigger drivers are current strength (slack vs run) and finding the right bottom structure on sonar.
QLD: 55 cm, bag of 5 (combined reef quota). WA: 41 cm, bag of 2 demersal allowance. NT: 50 cm, bag of 10. Always verify at the relevant state authority — QLD reef bag system is complex with combined-species quotas. Red emperor are slow-growing (a 60 cm fish is 10+ years).
From our training corpus of ~1.1M angler-logged catches across 14 regions. Last refreshed 2026-05-14.
Fishare tracks your home spots and pings you when the next 3-hour peak window opens. Log catches and blanks to teach the model your local patterns. Free forever for everyone who joins now.
Open Fishare