Where and when to catch Silver Whiting 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.
Called Southern School Whiting on our Western Australian guide.
Silver whiting are South Australia's small whiting of clean sand: a barred, silver-striped fish found from the Bight through both gulfs to Kangaroo Island and the Fleurieu. They're the whiting that turns up in a session aimed at bigger things, and they're worth keeping a few of. The main thing to know is which whiting you're holding, because King George, yellowfin and silver whiting all come off the same sand and PIRSA treats them very differently.
SA Size & Bag Limits
SA limits for Silver Whiting are set by PIRSA and change from time to time, so we link them rather than copy them.
Check PIRSA's limits and PIRSA: silver whiting before you fish.
Western Australian limits don't apply in South Australia.
Where to Catch Silver Whiting in SA
Silver whiting like clean sand with some water movement. The spots below list them: Hog Bay beach at Penneshaw on Kangaroo Island, and Point Turton on Yorke Peninsula's Hardwicke Bay.
Small strips of squid, peeled prawn, beach worms, bloodworm, pipi and cockle
Lures
Rarely taken on lures. Very small soft plastics or a worm-imitation scented plastic take the odd fish, but bait is far more reliable.
Rigs
A two-hook paternoster with size 6–8 long-shank hooks and just enough sinker to hold bottom, on 4–8 lb line. From a boat, the same rig with a heavier sinker to hold on the drift.
Technique
From the beach or a jetty over sand, cast a small bait onto clean sand, let it sit, and wait for the school to find it; once one bites, there are usually more. Keep baits small, since they have small mouths and strip big baits clean. From a boat, drift open sand and bounce the paternoster along the bottom, re-running the drift once you find fish.
Best Time
Any time of day with clean water and a bit of run in the gutter or tide. Juveniles are most common in the shallows in the warmer months; boat fish over deeper sand are about all year.
Identification
Also known asSchool whiting, southern school whiting
A slim, round-bodied whiting, sandy-pink to fawn above with a silver stripe along the side and white below, marked with oblique, broken rusty-brown bars across the back and upper flanks. Fins and tail are clear. The bars are the check: King George whiting are covered in spots rather than bars, and yellowfin whiting are plain silver with yellowish pelvic and anal fins. Other school whiting species carry a row of dusky blotches along the silver midline instead of bars. Anglers call all of them sand whiting or school whiting at one time or another, so look at the fish, not the name, because the rules differ between them.
Size & Growth
Beach and jetty fish are mostly 15–22 cm juveniles and young adults; the bigger 25–32 cm fish live offshore on open sand, which is why the good ones come from a boat. They mature at about 20 cm, commonly live to around 7 years, and top out at about 33 cm.
Diet & Habitat
Bottom feeders over clean sand, picking amphipods, mysids, small crabs, worms and other small invertebrates off the bottom. Young fish use the surf zone and gutters of exposed sandy beaches and the sand around jetties, and adults move out to open sand in roughly 20–60 m. They school by size, so where there's one there are usually more.
Eating Quality
Excellent: sweet, fine-flaked white flesh with no oiliness. Most are too small to fillet, so scale, gut and pan-fry them whole in butter, or butterfly the bigger boat fish and crumb them. Two minutes a side is plenty. Ice them straight away and eat them within a day or two, as they go soft in the freezer.