Skip to main content
Bite Compass
Shore / Surf

Australian Salmon

Arripis truttaceus

Where and when to catch Australian Salmon in South Australia: the SA season, the spots in our guide that hold them, and where to find SA's current size and bag limits.

Size
Up to about 10kg, commonly 2–5kg
SA season
Year-round (best Apr–Sep)
SA spots
56

Overview

South Australia is salmon nursery country. Young Australian salmon spend their first few years in the gulfs, bays and along the southern beaches before heading west to breed, so SA anglers catch a lot of them, mostly in the 1–3 kg range on the surf and as 20–35 cm "salmon trout" off the jetties, walls and river mouths. The surf beaches of the southern Fleurieu, the Coorong, the Limestone Coast and the west coast of Eyre Peninsula carry the bigger fish, and the run lifts from autumn through winter. Unlike garfish, calamari and snapper in the gulfs, salmon are open statewide, which has made them a lot of people's go-to target.

SA Size & Bag Limits

SA limits for Australian Salmon are set by PIRSA and change from time to time, so we link them rather than copy them. Check PIRSA's limits and PIRSA's Australian salmon profile before you fish.

Western Australian limits don't apply in South Australia.

Where to Catch Australian Salmon in SA

Australian salmon are listed at over 50 SA spots. For school salmon, pick a surf beach with defined gutters, such as Waitpinga, Middleton, Goolwa or the Coorong, or a west-coast beach like Locks Well. For salmon trout, almost any metro jetty, breakwall or river mouth holds them through the cooler months.

Adelaide Metro

Aldinga Beach (south of the reef reserve) Grange Jetty Henley Beach Jetty Largs Bay Jetty Marino Rocks North Haven Breakwater Onkaparinga River Mouth Outer Harbor Breakwater Port Noarlunga Jetty Port River (Garden Island) Sellicks Beach Semaphore Jetty West Beach Boat Ramp Breakwall West Lakes (Trimmer Parade Inlet)

Fleurieu Peninsula

Cape Jervis Jetty Carrickalinga Beach Goolwa Beach, Barrage & Murray Mouth Horseshoe Bay Jetty (Port Elliot) Middleton Beach Normanville Beach & Bungala River Mouth Rapid Bay Jetty Second Valley Jetty Victor Harbor Causeway & Screwpile Jetty (Granite Island) Waitpinga Beach Wirrina Cove Marina (Marina St Vincent)

Kangaroo Island

American River Wharf Christmas Cove & Hog Bay (Penneshaw) Emu Bay Jetty Kingscote Jetty Vivonne Bay Jetty

Yorke Peninsula

Ardrossan Jetty Browns Beach (Innes National Park) Marion Bay Jetty Port Broughton Jetty Port Hughes Jetty Stenhouse Bay Jetty

Upper Spencer Gulf

Port Augusta Foreshore Jetty Port Germein Jetty

Eyre Peninsula

Arno Bay Jetty Coffin Bay Town Jetty Elliston Jetty Locks Well Beach (Elliston) Point Lowly (Whyalla) Port Lincoln Town Jetty Port Neill Jetty Streaky Bay Jetty Tumby Bay Jetty Venus Bay Jetty Whyalla Jetty (Circular Jetty & Marina)

Limestone Coast

42 Mile Crossing (Coorong) Beachport Jetty Carpenter Rocks (Bucks Bay) Kingston SE Port MacDonnell Jetty & Breakwater Robe (Lake Butler Marina & Long Beach) Southend Jetty (Rivoli Bay)

How to Catch

Best Baits

Whole pilchards on ganged hooks, pilchard or salmon fillet strips, cockles and pipis, beach worms, whitebait; small strips or prawn for salmon trout

Lures

Chrome slugs and metal slices, Halco Twisty-style spoons, small stickbaits and poppers, soft plastics; small metals and bait jigs for salmon trout

Rigs

A ganged rig of three 3/0–4/0 hooks for whole pilchards, or a paternoster with a strip bait from the beach. A 3–4 m surf rod casts both. For lures, a medium spinning outfit with a 7–10 kg leader. For salmon trout off a jetty or wall, a light rod, a small float or bait jig and size 6–8 hooks.

Technique

Find the bait and the fish follow. On the beach, read the gutters and fish the deeper, darker water, often closer in than you'd expect. Cast metals into the wash and wind fast with the odd pause, or soak a ganged pilchard in a gutter. When birds are working a school, cast past it and wind through it. Salmon jump and run hard, so keep the drag light enough to stop the hooks pulling, and use the waves to land them. For salmon trout, berley with bread or pollard and fish small baits under a float.

Best Time

Dawn and dusk are prime, and a moving tide with a bit of swell keeps them feeding. Overcast days can fire all day. The runs are seasonal and differ by coast, so check the local season; salmon trout are around for much more of the year in sheltered water.

  • Most SA salmon are sub-adults that will later migrate west to spawn, so the surf fish here run smaller and more numerous than the breeding schools seen further west.
  • PIRSA's salmon limit is size-tiered, with a separate allowance for small salmon trout and larger fish. Check the PIRSA species profile before you keep any.

Identification

Also known as Salmon, salmon trout (juveniles), blackback (adults)

Torpedo-shaped, dark blue-green to olive across the back with bright silver flanks, bright yellow pectoral fins, a deeply forked tail with a dark margin, and rows of gold-brown spots on the upper body that are clearest on smaller fish. The scales feel smooth and the teeth are tiny; if it has proper cutting teeth you've caught a tailor. The real confusion is with Australian herring, because a 25 cm salmon trout and a big herring look almost the same in the bucket. Herring have black tips on the tail lobes, a bigger eye and scales that feel rough when you run a thumb towards the head. There are eastern and western species of Australian salmon, separable only by counting gill rakers, and neither has anything to do with a true salmon beyond the name.

Size & Growth

Juveniles, the 20–35 cm "salmon trout", school in sheltered water for their first few years. Adults on the open beaches mostly run 45–70 cm and 1.5–5 kg, a 6 kg fish is a good one, and the species tops out around 90 cm and 9–10 kg. They mature at about four years and live for a decade or more. Size within a school is remarkably uniform, so what you catch first is usually what you'll catch all session.

Diet & Habitat

Salmon eat small schooling baitfish, pilchards, whitebait, hardyheads and small squid, and also graze krill and other small crustaceans. Adults work the surf zone, the back of a bar, rock platforms, reef edges and breakwall corners, wherever swell concentrates bait, and often give themselves away with diving birds and a big dark patch in the water. Juveniles hold in bays, harbours and lower estuaries until they're big enough to join the schools on the open coast. Adults travel long distances along the coast to spawn, which is why runs come and go.

Eating Quality

Average fresh, very good smoked. The flesh is dark pink, firm, strong-flavoured and on the oily side. Bleed it the moment it's landed and ice it hard; an unbled salmon is genuinely unpleasant. Smaller fish and salmon trout eat noticeably cleaner than big breeders. Cooked fresh, do it the same day, trim every scrap of the dark bloodline and lean on bold flavours such as curries, fish cakes or a hot barbecue. Hot-smoked salmon and smoked salmon pâté are its finest hour. It freezes better than most oily fish if filleted, skinned and vac-sealed, and it's excellent cut bait for mulloway, sharks and tailor.

Guides Featuring Australian Salmon

Australian Salmon elsewhere: Western Australia · New South Wales

← All SA Species