Yellowfin Bream
Where and when to catch Yellowfin Bream 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.
- Size
- Up to 65cm, commonly 25–35cm
- NSW season
- Year-round
- NSW spots
- 85
Overview
If you've fished anywhere on the NSW coast, you've probably caught a yellowfin bream, or been robbed of a prawn by one. They live in every estuary, coastal lake, harbour and breakwall from the Queensland border to the Victorian line, and along the ocean rocks and beaches in between. They're the first fish for half the kids on NSW wharves and a lifelong obsession for the tournament lure crowd, and they humble both with equal enthusiasm. The fishing goes all year, with the big run in late autumn and winter, when bream school up around estuary mouths, breakwalls and ocean headlands to spawn.
NSW Size & Bag Limits
NSW limits for Yellowfin Bream are set by NSW DPIRD and change from time to time, so we link them rather than copy them. Check NSW DPIRD's limits and NSW DPIRD: yellowfin bream before you fish.
Western Australian limits don't apply in New South Wales.
Where to Catch Yellowfin Bream in NSW
Bream are in almost every estuary, harbour and coastal lake on the coast. The spots below list them: breakwalls and entrance channels for the bigger winter fish, wharves, bridges and baths for year-round fishing on foot, and sand and weed flats for lures in summer.
Sydney Harbour
Sydney East & Botany
Sydney Northern Beaches
Sutherland & Port Hacking
Central Coast
Newcastle & Lake Macquarie
Port Stephens & Hunter
Illawarra
How to Catch
Best Baits
Peeled prawn (fresh beats frozen), nippers (yabbies), beach and blood worms, pipis, mullet or tuna strip, chicken gut and bread for berleying, and cunjevoi off the ocean rocks
Lures
Small soft plastics (2–3 inch grubs, minnows and prawn shapes), small crankbaits and shallow hardbodies, metal blades, and small surface walkers and poppers over the flats in the warmer months
Rigs
For bait, the lightest running ball sinker that reaches the bottom, straight down to a size 1–4 long-shank or baitholder hook on 6–8 lb fluorocarbon. Around wharves and pylons an unweighted or barely weighted bait drifting down with berley often outfishes anything on the bottom. Off the ocean rocks and walls, step up to 8–10 lb leader with a small running sinker or a float. For lures, 2–6 lb braid, a 4–8 lb leader and a 1/16–1/8 oz jig head.
Technique
Fish structure and keep it light. Cast a lightly weighted bait tight to wharf piles, rock walls, oyster leases and snags, let it sink naturally and feel for the pick-up before lifting into the fish. Bream are wary of thick line and a dragging sinker, so the more naturally the bait falls, the better. A steady trickle of berley (bread, chopped prawn or tuna) brings them up off the bottom. On lures, cast to the edges, let the plastic sink, then hop it slowly back with long pauses; most hits come on the drop. Over shallow flats in summer, a surface lure walked slowly across the top draws bream up from the weed.
Best Time
Daylight is the base, and the top of the tide is the strongest part of it, when water floods over the flats and around structure. Bream are caught every month. The winter months bring the bigger fish to estuary mouths, breakwalls and ocean rocks as they gather to spawn; summer suits lures and surface work up on the flats. Dawn and dusk around wharves and bridges are worth fishing, and a little rain-stained water rarely hurts.
- Yellowfin and black bream overlap in the southern coastal lakes and hybridise in a few of them. Check the fins before you keep a fish, and check NSW DPIRD for how bream are bagged.
Identification
Also known as Bream, silver bream, sea bream, surf bream; bright ocean fish are often called blue-nose bream
A deep, slab-sided bream, silver to olive-green over the back, with the pelvic and anal fins yellow and a small black spot at the top of the pectoral-fin base. The dorsal fin and tail carry darker edges. Fish off the open rocks and beaches are bright silver, while estuary fish from up among the mangroves run noticeably darker, which is where the confusion starts. Black bream (Acanthopagrus butcheri) are darker overall with dusky to brownish belly fins, no yellow, and the two hybridise in a few coastal lakes, so the odd fish genuinely is both. Tarwhine are silver with fine gold lines along the flanks and a blunter snout. Juvenile snapper have blue spots and a pink cast.
Size & Growth
Most fish caught are 23–30 cm and a few hundred grams. A 35 cm bream is a good one, anything over a kilo is worth a photo, and the recorded maximum is around 60 cm and 4 kg, though fish half that size are what most anglers spend a lifetime catching. Growth is slow and they live for many years. Yellowfin bream can change sex: after spawning, part of the male population turns female, so a fair share of the bigger fish you catch are females.
Diet & Habitat
A carnivore that eats what the tide brings past: crabs, prawns, worms, small shellfish, sea squirts and small fish, crunched with strong molar-like teeth. Bream live in estuaries, coastal lakes, mangrove creeks and the lower fresh reaches of rivers, around seagrass, oyster racks, rock walls, wharf piles, bridge pylons and moored boats, and along ocean beaches and rock platforms. Juveniles grow up in shallow seagrass. In winter many adults gather around estuary entrances and nearby rocks and beaches to spawn, which is when the bigger ocean fish turn up, although some fish spawn well inside the estuary too.
Eating Quality
Good eating: white, moist, slightly sweet flesh, best from clean ocean water and the lower estuary. Fish from muddy, weedy upper reaches can taste of it, so bleed and ice them straight away. Plate-sized fish are good scaled, gutted and cooked whole, and anything over about 30 cm gives two skin-on fillets that crisp well. Bream are deep-bodied, so the fillet yield is modest for the size, and the frames make good stock.
Guides Featuring Yellowfin Bream
Yellowfin Bream elsewhere: Western Australia