Where and when to catch Leatherjacket in New South Wales: the NSW season, the spots in our guide that hold them, and where to find NSW's current size and bag limits.
NSW has more than twenty species of leatherjacket, and every wharf, pylon and weed bed in the state's estuaries seems to have at least one of them. In the harbours and lakes the common ones are fan-bellied, six-spine and rough leatherjackets; offshore, anglers meet yellow-finned, black reef, velvet and chinaman leatherjackets. They're the reason a lot of Sydney anglers lose their first packet of prawns, and also the reason some keep coming back: few fish eat better for less effort.
Western Australian limits don't apply in New South Wales.
Where to Catch Leatherjacket in NSW
Leatherjackets hang around hard structure with growth on it: wharf and bridge pylons, jetties, harbour walls and rock edges, plus seagrass beds in the estuaries and lakes. The spots below list them, from Sydney Harbour wharves to the Central Coast lakes and the Illawarra harbours.
Small pieces of peeled prawn, squid, pipi, mussel, cunjevoi and crab. Tough baits like squid stay on the hook longer against their nibbling.
Lures
Not really a lure fish, though they'll attack tiny soft plastics and small bait jigs dropped along pylons.
Rigs
Small, strong, long-shank hooks, size 8–12, on a paternoster with the sinker on the bottom and the hook just above. Long-shank hooks matter: those beak-like teeth bite through a leader or a short-shank hook as easily as they strip bait. A light rod helps you feel the nibbles.
Technique
Drop baits straight down beside pylons, rock walls and weed edges, and keep the line tight. Leatherjackets peck rather than run, so strike at the first firm tug or you'll wind up a bare hook. If your bait keeps vanishing, that's usually leatherjackets, and switching to smaller hooks and tougher bait turns a nuisance into a feed. A little berley helps hold a school around you.
Best Time
Daytime feeders around structure, with fish caught year-round. Tide matters less than for most fish, though a gentle run over weedy structure often brings them in.
Check NSW DPIRD's saltwater limits for leatherjackets before keeping a feed; they're listed as a group rather than species by species.
Identification
Also known asJackets, leatheries, six-spine, fan-belly, chinaman (offshore)
'Leatherjacket' covers a whole family, with more than twenty species in some states' waters, and they vary a lot in colour and shape. What they share: a laterally flattened body; tough, rough skin like fine sandpaper instead of normal scales; a small mouth with sharp, beak-like teeth; small gill openings; and a single, serrated spine on top of the head that folds down into a groove. Common inshore species include the six-spine, fan-bellied, rough, toothbrush and yellow-finned leatherjackets; offshore there are bigger ones such as the ocean jacket. Triggerfish are the look-alike, but they have a proper first dorsal fin with several spines instead of the one long spine. Toadoes and pufferfish also steal baits but have smooth skin, no head spine and fused beak teeth.
Size & Growth
Most inshore leatherjackets are well under a kilo, usually 20–35 cm. Some offshore species reach about 3 kg. Growth and lifespan vary by species; the inshore ones are mostly short-lived and fast-growing.
Diet & Habitat
Opportunists that eat almost anything: algae, small crustaceans, shellfish, worms and small fish, and whatever is on your hook. Inshore species live around jetty and wharf pylons, rock walls, moorings, seagrass beds and reef, often in schools; others live over sand, mud and sponge gardens out to 250 m or more. Anywhere with growth on hard structure tends to hold them.
Eating Quality
Excellent: firm, sweet, white flesh with very few bones. The skin is too tough to scale, so the standard method is to cut behind the head spine and peel the whole skin off toward the tail, then cook the fish whole on the frame or fillet it. Mind the head spine when handling. Pan-fried, grilled or crumbed, they're as good as anything on the reef.