Where and when to catch Queenfish in Queensland: the QLD season, the spots in our guide that hold them, and where to find QLD's current size and possession limits.
QLD limits for Queenfish are set by Fisheries Queensland and change from time to time, so we link them rather than copy them.
Check Fisheries Queensland's limits before you fish.
Western Australian limits don't apply in Queensland.
Live mullet, hardyheads, prawn, strip baits — though most are caught on lures
Lures
Halco Roosta poppers, small stickbaits, chrome slugs, soft plastics on 1/4–3/8oz jigheads, surface walkers
Rigs
Single-hook lure setups on 30–40lb leader, with a short heavy mono bite trace (queenfish have rough mouths and small teeth). For bait, a running sinker or unweighted live-bait rig on a 5/0 circle hook. Wire trace not needed unless mackerel are mixed in.
Technique
Sight-cast to schools busting bait at the surface — the strike is immediate. Walk-the-dog stickbaits and popped poppers both work; vary retrieve speed until they commit. When fish are deeper, soft plastics worked through the water column produce well. They follow lures repeatedly — keep the retrieve going right to the rod tip.
Best Time
Active year-round in the tropical north, with the cooler dry season (April–October) the most fishable. Anglers rate run-in tides over the flats and around creek mouths. Early morning and the hour before dark consistently outproduce midday.
From the Boyne River and Tannum Sands north, including Gladstone, the Calliope and Fitzroy rivers and the Capricorn Coast creeks, this is crocodile country: stay back from the water's edge, don't wade, and clean fish away from the water. Be Crocwise.
Identification
Also known asQueenie, leatherskin, talang queenfish
Extraordinarily thin through the body — a queenie viewed head-on is a silver ribbon — with a row of five to eight dark oval blotches along the lateral line, a large protrusible mouth that reaches well past the eye, and semi-detached rays at the rear of the dorsal and anal fins. Trevally are far deeper-bodied and carry hard scutes along the tail. Giant herring are also silver and also jump, but have no flank blotches and no row of short, separate spines in front of the dorsal fin. Needleskin queenfish are smaller with more numerous spots.
Size & Growth
Most queenfish are 50–90 cm and 2–5 kg, which is a very good fish on light gear given how hard they jump. A metre-plus queenie of 8–10 kg is a standout, and around 12 kg is the practical maximum. They grow quickly and school by size, so a school busting bait on a flat will produce a run of similar fish. Do not read length as weight — a metre-long queenfish is a thin fish and weighs far less than a metre-long trevally, which is exactly why they fight the way they do and eat the way they do.
Eating Quality
Mediocre on the table, and that is the settled view rather than a harsh one. The flesh is thin, soft and slightly oily, and it turns to mush if the fish sits around; big queenfish are noticeably worse than small ones. If you are keeping one, take a fish under about 3 kg, bleed it and ice it immediately, then skin the fillets and trim the dark flesh hard. Handled that way it is passable crumbed, and genuinely decent as sashimi if it is cut within an hour or two of capture — which is the best use for it. Do not freeze it. Most anglers release queenfish and fill the esky with trevally or emperor instead, and the leftovers make excellent strip bait.