Species guide · From estuary silvers to offshore GTs — speed and brutality

Trevally fishing guide.

Also known as GT, Giant Trevally, Bigeye Trevally, Silver Trevally, Golden Trevally. Bait, technique, tide windows, and where the bite is on right now.

Where the Trevally bite is on right now

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

1 Weipa · Weipa, QLD · Australia QLD-CAPE 2 Darwin · Darwin, NT · Australia NT 3 Great Barrier Reef · Cairns, QLD · Australia QLD-N 4 Townsville · Townsville, QLD · Australia QLD-N 5 Gold Coast · Gold Coast, QLD · Australia QLD-SE 6 Brisbane · Brisbane, QLD · Australia QLD-SE

Best bait

Best lures

Technique

GTs (giant trevally — tropical reefs): cast 180–250 mm stickbaits and poppers at reef edges, bommies and current lines on heavy popping rods (PE6–PE10). Walk the bait fast — they want to chase. Strikes are explosive surface eruptions; the take rate to landing rate is brutal because they live in nasty structure. Silvers (estuaries, NSW): light gear, small metals and plastics around schools busting on bait near wharves, breakwalls, and harbour markers.

Tide windows that matter

Current is the master variable for all trevally species. GTs hunt on current lines and the up-current side of reef structure — slack tide is dead, peak run is gold. In estuaries, silvers school heavily on the tide-change edges around wharf lights at night.

Moon & solunar

For GTs, the few days either side of the new moon often produce the biggest surface eruptions on tropical reefs — dark nights mean active hunting. Full moons can shut the day bite down (they've fed all night) and re-open it in the late afternoon. Estuary silvers are minimally moon-driven.

Regulations

Highly variable by species and state. QLD trevally: 30 cm, bag of 20 (combined). NSW: no minimum for silver, GT typically released. NT GT: 70 cm, bag of 5. WA: bag of 10 various. Check the relevant state fisheries — GTs are tag-and-release in most serious jurisdictions because of ciguatera risk and slow growth.

What ~1.2K 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 Casting 60%
2 Bottom fishing 17%
3 Trolling 6%
4 Jig fishing 5%
5 Free line 2%

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
23.5°C
middle 50%: 21.3–25.4°C
Wind
3.3 m/s
middle 50%: 2.2–4.6 m/s
Swell
0.6 m
middle 50%: 0.4–1 m
Pressure
1013.9 hPa
middle 50%: 1010–1017.7 hPa
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