Striped Trumpeter fishing guide.

Where the Striped Trumpeter bite is on right now

Hero spots in our coverage where Striped Trumpeter is in season for June. Click through for the live forecast.

Best bait

• Fresh squid — whole arrow squid or thick calamari strips on a paternoster, the gun bait off deep reef
• Strip baits of cured slimy mackerel, jack mackerel or salmon, cut long and tough so they ride the swell
• Whole or half pilchards (mulies) on the bottom hook when the leatherjackets aren't shredding everything
• Cuttlefish and octopus pieces — they stay on the hook through 80–120 m of drop and the wahoo-class current
• Live or fresh-dead jack mackerel and small couta sent down to bigger fish holding off the seamount edges

Best lures

• Heavy octopus / squid-skirt jigs (150–250 g) bounced on the reef in 60–120 m, the classic Tassie deep-drop presentation
• Knife / slow-pitch metal jigs 200–300 g worked off the bottom on braid when the current lets you hold contact
• Lumo-skirted paternoster (dropper) rigs with 6/0–8/0 octopus hooks, two-hook droppers above a snapper sinker heavy enough to find bottom
• Bait jigs / sabiki tipped with squid strip for stripey holding tight to the reef in the mid-water column
• Deep-drop electric-reel rigs with lumo tubing and cyalume sticks for the deepest seamount marks where it's all about getting down and staying down

Technique

Stripey live on broken cool-water reef, pinnacles and seamount edges in roughly 40–120 m, so this is a bottom-bouncing and deep-drop game, not a casting one. Mark a reef rise or hard ground on the sounder, set up a drift or hold on the spot, and get a heavy paternoster down with enough lead (a snapper or star sinker) to stay pinned to the bottom in the swell and current — anything too light and you'll never feel the reef. Drop until you tap structure, wind up a turn or two to keep the droppers just off the bottom, and work the rod tip so the squid and strip baits flutter. Bites are often a solid, confident thump rather than a rattle; let it load up and lift into it smoothly because a panicked strike at depth pulls baits out of the strike zone. They school, so when you find one, stay on the mark and re-drop fast — a good patch of reef can produce a string of fish. If you're jigging, drop a heavy octopus or slow-pitch jig to the bottom and work it with short, sharp lifts close to the structure. Big stripey can bury you in the reef, so run heavy leader and lean on them early to lift them clear before they reef you. Best grounds are the deep reefs and seamounts off Tasmania's east and south coast — Tasman Peninsula, Storm Bay, the Eaglehawk and Pirates Bay deep ground, St Helens and St Marys reefs, and the offshore pinnacles out wide — plus deep reef off far-southern Victoria and the islands of Bass Strait. Calm-weather offshore species: pick a weather window, because these are exposed, deep, big-water marks.

Tide windows that matter

Bite is driven more by current flow over the reef than tide height — you want enough run to keep baits working but not so much you can't hold bottom. Slack at the turn of the tide and the first of the new run are prime, when you can finally get a heavy paternoster pinned and stay in contact with the reef. Early morning and the low-light edges of the day generally fish best on the deep ground.

Moon & solunar

Deep-reef stripey aren't a moon-phase obsession the way a snapper or kingfish session is — depth and structure matter more than lunar timing. That said, lighter tidal movement around the neaps makes it far easier to hold bottom and stay in the strike zone in 80–120 m, so neap windows often translate to more comfortable, more productive deep-drop sessions than the big spring runs.

Regulations

Striped trumpeter are slow-growing, long-lived and highly prized, and they're managed accordingly — bag and size limits apply and vary by state (Tasmania in particular has specific rules for this species). Because they're a deep-water fish, barotrauma is a real issue on released fish, so handle releases carefully and use a release weight. Always check the current rules with your state fisheries agency before you head out.