What’s Biting in Perth in June

June is when winter actually arrives. The salmon run has packed up and headed east, the tailor are largely a memory, and the King George whiting bite gets patchier as the water keeps dropping. The flipside is that June hands you one of the best bream months of the year, solid mulloway water in the Swan, and a handful of species that genuinely prefer it cold and grim. The weather is the whole game this month — cold fronts stack up across the Indian Ocean, the sou-westerlies arrive with rain and attitude, and half of Perth loses their jacket on the first ten degree morning like it’s a genuine crisis. Between fronts there are golden windows. If you can read the BOM and commit to the gap, June fishes hard.

Black Bream: Pre-Spawn Build-Up in the Swan

If you only fish one thing in June, make it black bream. This is the pre-spawn build-up in the Swan, when the fish are putting on condition before the main event kicks off later in winter. They’re not stacked on their spawning marks yet — they’re feeding hard, packing on weight, and that’s exactly why a well-placed bait or plastic gets hammered. June bream are hungry in a way August bream simply aren’t, and that makes for some of the most willing fishing of the whole spawn cycle.

Ashfield Flats is the headline spot right now. Work the snag lines and pontoon edges on a rising tide with small soft plastics, 38mm hardbodies, or unweighted prawns drifted through structure — the fish are on the bag, not being precious. The Narrows Bridge pylons are another June staple — bump a small vibe down the pylons and hang on. Point Walter produces well for land-based anglers, particularly the sand bar edges at the tide change. Overcast days with a light drizzle are gold. You can still fish moderately quick retrieves this month and get smashed — that window closes as spawn ramps up, so make the most of it.

Mulloway: Swan River Night Sessions

June is when the Swan mulloway game comes into its own. The fish move up into the middle reaches chasing bait, and the cooler water and longer nights mean they feed later and more willingly. It’s not glamorous fishing — you’ll stand on a bank in the dark in the rain and second-guess every life choice — but the fish are there.

The stretch from Narrows Bridge up past the Causeway has form, and so do the deeper holes near Mosman Bay. Fresh mulies, whole squid, or live herring on a running sinker rig, cast into the deeper water, and settle in. The bite usually comes around tide change, and the bigger tides on the new and full moon outproduce the neaps. Dress for it properly — puffer jacket, beanie, thermos, the lot. The thermos stops being a nice-to-have in June and starts being a survival tool. By 9° your hands have stopped taking instructions from your brain, and tying a new leader becomes a ten-minute ordeal you’ll remember for days.

Cobbler: The Estuary’s Winter Special

Cobbler are one of those species most Perth anglers don’t target and a handful of locals quietly love. June is prime time. They feed hardest in the cooler months, they’re almost exclusively a night bite, and they turn up in the Swan, the Canning and the Peel-Harvey in solid numbers. Handle them carefully — those dorsal and pectoral spines will ruin your evening in a way that lingers.

A simple paternoster with a running sinker, baited with fresh prawn or squid strips, dropped onto mud and weed bottom will get you amongst them. The Narrows Bridge flats on a rising tide after dark are reliable, and the back of the Mandurah Jetty produces too. Long soaks, patience, and enough layers to survive standing still for three hours. Eat them fresh — cobbler on the plate is a quiet secret most Perth families who grew up on the river already know.

Tarwhine: The Jetty Underdog

While the whiting slow down, tarwhine quietly pick up the slack off the metro jetties. They’re a cousin of the bream, they school up in the cooler months, and they’ll save a session when nothing else wants to play. They also make excellent table fish if you bleed them quick.

Ammo Jetty is hard to beat in June, and Bicton Baths holds tarwhine through winter. Hillarys Boat Harbour breakwalls produce too. Small long-shank hooks, a light sinker, and fresh prawn or squid. Fish the pylons and shaded edges, berley lightly, and expect a mix of tarwhine, herring and the odd skippy. On a cold grey morning with a light sou-wester, a jetty session full of tarwhine is a perfectly acceptable outcome.

Australian Herring: Still There, Still Biting

Australian herring don’t care what month it is. Cold front, warm snap, howling easterly, glassy morning — they’re still there, still eating. In June they’re the fallback that lets you call the session a success when the bream have shut down and the mulloway are being mulloway.

Any jetty, groyne, or sheltered beach with a bit of structure will hold them. Ammo Jetty and the breakwalls at Hillarys Boat Harbour are safe bets. Gang hooks under a float with a strip of mulie is the rig that won’t let you down. They’re brilliant for getting kids on fish when it’s too cold for anything adventurous, and the bigger ones make outstanding live bait for Swan mulloway that same evening. Two birds, one session.

Working the Weather

The real skill in June isn’t the rigs or the baits — it’s reading the forecast and picking the gap. Cold fronts roll through every three to five days. The front itself is a write-off. The 36 hours after a front clears, as the wind swings south-east and backs off, is when things switch on. The BOM coastal wind warning page will become your most-opened tab. State of Origin might be on in the background, ignored. The Dockers or Eagles debrief will be playing on the drive home and it will be dark. That’s June.

Dawesville Cut fishes well on the clean end of a front for everything from bream to tailor strays, and the Mandurah system generally offers more shelter than the open metro beaches when the wind’s up. If the whole week looks grim, pick the least grim day, rug up, and back yourself.

June isn’t the month for fair-weather anglers. It’s the month for the ones who’ve already done the Coles run at 6am in a puffer jacket over trackies and called it dressed. Check BiteCompass for wind, swell and tides before you commit, pick your window between the fronts, and you’ll find Perth in winter quietly produces some of the best fishing of the year.