What’s Biting in Perth in November

The autumn and winter KGW bite rolls right through spring, and November is one of the best months of the year to chase them before the water gets properly warm. King George whiting are holding on the sand patches between weed in three to eight metres, and the pre-breeze mornings are prime. Get on the water at first light, fish hard until the southerly pipes up around eleven, and go home with a feed.

Hillarys Boat Harbour out to the lumps, the grounds off Warnbro Beach, and the sand holes around Mandurah all produce. Small long-shank hooks, light fluorocarbon, fresh squid strips or blue sardine fillets. Anchor up, burley lightly with chook pellets and tuna oil, and keep moving if nothing shows in twenty minutes. They’re a fish that rewards being fussy — if you’re catching nothing but sand whiting and wrasse, you’re on the wrong patch of sand.

The southern calamari run has been building since winter, and by November the shallower weed beds are stacked. Warm water, longer days, and plenty of bait means the squid are aggressive and willing to hit a jig right up in the wash. This is the month to take a newcomer out — when squid are on this hard, even a badly worked jig gets belted.

The one public jetty at Woodman Point — Ammo Jetty — is closed for its rebuild until around summer 2027, so the night squid crowd has moved to the Mandurah Jetty lights, and dawn sessions off Rockingham Jetty regularly produce bag limits before the sea breeze arrives. Size 2.5 and 3.0 jigs cover most situations — natural browns and pinks under a sunny sky, brighter oranges and chartreuse in low light. Rip, pause, repeat. Ninety percent of hits come on the drop, so if you’re not pausing long enough to let the jig flutter, you’re missing fish. Bring an extra bucket.

The summer tailor schools start turning up on the metro beaches through November. They’re not the massive greenbacks of the autumn run — these are smaller, faster, and travel in pods that work the gutters before sunrise and again at last light. Get the timing right and you’ll have a session that’ll make you forget about work Christmas parties entirely.

Trigg Beach and Scarborough Beach are the classics — find a gutter running close to shore, cast a metal slug or a whole mulie on ganged hooks, and work the deeper water on the inside edge. First light is the window. Get there before the sun actually cracks the horizon, because the bite often shuts off the moment direct light hits the water. If you’re fishing Trigg carpark at five a.m. in November, you’re sharing it with a handful of other regulars, a few joggers, and the ocean to yourself. Come December that same carpark is a war zone.

Yellowfin whiting are the sleeper species of a Perth summer, and November is when the flats game really opens up. Warm, shallow sand in clear water, fish tailing on a rising tide, light tackle and long casts — it’s about as close to flats fishing for permit as you’ll get without a plane ticket. The fish are spooky and the sessions are slow, but when you get one on a small popper it’s a genuinely brilliant bit of fishing.

The flats around Palm Beach Jetty, the shallow sand off Rockingham Jetty, and the Mandurah estuary entrance all hold yellowfin through the month. Small surface lures — bent minnows, tiny poppers, or unweighted prawn imitations — worked slowly across the sand on a rising tide will get eaten. Bait fishers do well with live beach worms or small prawns on a light running sinker. Polarised sunnies are non-negotiable. If you can’t see the fish, you won’t catch the fish.

When the wind’s up, the kids are bored, or the squid have gone off the bite, Australian herring will save the day. They’re thick around every metro jetty, groyne and sheltered beach in November, and they don’t care what the forecast is doing. A float rig with a strip of mulie, a few small chunks thrown out as berley, and you’ll be on fish in about three minutes.

Coogee Beach, the rock walls at Mandurah Jetty, and every groyne between Scarborough and Fremantle produces. For the bigger bull herring, fish a couple of metres under the float rather than right up top — the quality fish sit deeper while the undersized hordes fight over the surface bait. They’re outstanding live bait for bigger tailor — or a land-based pink snapper outside the closed Sounds — if you’re running a two-rod setup.

November sits inside the window where pink snapper aggregate in Cockburn and Warnbro Sounds for their annual spawn, and that fishery is shut tight. The Cockburn Sound and Warnbro Sound closure runs from 1 August to 31 January inclusive — no take, boat or shore, full stop. November is dead in the middle of it. Don’t even rig up inside the Sounds; the closure is actively enforced and it exists to protect the breeding stock.

Outside the Sounds, the news isn’t much better for boaties. Boat-based demersal scalefish fishing — pink snapper, dhufish and the rest — is closed across the entire West Coast bioregion, Kalbarri to Augusta, until spring 2027. November 2026 is well inside that closure. The only legal way to chase a metro pinkie this month is land-based: a jetty, mole or beach mark outside the spawning Sounds, where the land-based demersal bag is two. Fresh bait, a bit of berley, and patience off the rocks at first light or dusk. When the boat closure eventually lifts, the deeper reefs and lumps in fifteen to thirty metres come back into play — but that’s a 2027 conversation, not a 2026 one. Read the rules, respect the breeders, and check the current dates with DPIRD at fish.wa.gov.au before you do anything.