Black jewfish are the jewfish of WA's Pilbara and Kimberley — the northern cousin of mulloway, found from around Onslow north through Port Hedland, Broome, King Sound and Cambridge Gulf, not Perth. They school in deep holes, creek mouths and harbour channels over mud and rubble, feed best around the tide change on neaps, and suffer badly from barotrauma once caught from deeper than about 10m.
Overview
Black jewfish are the jewfish of WA's tropical north — the fish Pilbara and Kimberley anglers mean when they say 'jewie', and the northern stand-in for the mulloway that Perth anglers chase. They live from around Onslow north through Dampier, Port Hedland, Broome, King Sound and Cambridge Gulf, in harbour channels, deep creek holes, rock bars and coastal reef out to about 100m, and they school up tightly on favoured ground. Most are caught on neap tides around the change, because the big springs up here turn the water to chocolate milk and make deep holes unfishable. They pull hard, eat very well, and don't handle being dragged up from depth, so this is a fish to keep a legal one and stop, not one to catch and release all afternoon.
Identification
Black jew, northern mulloway, jewie, jewfish (in the north), blackspotted croaker, spotted croaker
A big, long-bodied croaker, bronze-grey to almost black across the back with a silvery-bronze belly, a large mouth and a pale lateral line running into the tail. Smaller fish are scattered with black spots over the upper body and the dorsal and tail fins — the 'blackspotted croaker' of the textbooks — and the spots fade as they grow. The mix-up is mulloway, and the ranges barely overlap: mulloway stop around Exmouth Gulf, black jewfish start around Onslow. Black jew are darker, have a noticeably narrower tail wrist, and the tail itself is convex to almost pointed rather than squared-off. It matters at the ruler: black jewfish is 70cm, mulloway 50cm. And no, it's nothing to do with the dhufish that southern anglers also call jewfish.
How to Catch
Whole or butterflied mullet, whole whiting, big fresh fish fillets, squid, king prawns
Large soft plastics (6–7" paddle tails and jerk shads on 1–2oz jigheads), soft vibes, Prawnstar-style prawn imitations, deep barra hardbodies around rock bars
Running sinker rig with a single 7/0–8/0 circle hook on 60–80lb leader, with only as much lead as the current needs. Circle hooks set in the jaw and make a clean release possible. For plastics, a heavy jighead bounced along the bottom of the hole. Braid of 30–50lb on a heavy spin or overhead outfit — a big jew in a tide run won't be stopped on light gear, and the sharks will take any fish you play for too long.
Find the hole first: harbour channels, creek-mouth holes, rock bars and deep patches in the bays hold black jew, often schooled on one small piece of bottom. Fish it around the tide change on the smaller neap tides, when the water clears and the current eases enough to keep a bait or plastic down. Drop the bait to the bottom and wait, or hop a plastic slowly through the school. Night sessions on live or fresh bait in the deeper creek holes also produce. Once you have a legal fish or two, move on — anything released from deep water is likely to die, and the schools are small, local populations that don't recover quickly.
Resident and catchable year-round in the Pilbara and Kimberley. The tide matters more than the calendar: smaller neap tides and the hour either side of the change are the standard window, with the run-in usually better than the run-out. The dry season (May–October) is when most people fish for them and when the water is clearest; fish gather on their spawning grounds from about August through to the new year. Dawn and dusk are the windows the score shows.
Up to 1.5m and 30kg+, commonly 5–15kg
Year-round (Pilbara and Kimberley)
Size & Growth
Most black jew caught in WA are 70–100cm and 5–15kg; Broome fish typically run 7–12kg, and a 20kg-plus fish is a very good one. They grow fast — around 60cm in two years — and reach about 1.5m and 30kg over a life of 15 years or so. They mature at roughly 80–90cm, which sits above the 70cm minimum, so a legal black jew is often a fish that hasn't bred yet. That's the argument for keeping one for the table and letting the big breeders go, as long as they came from shallow water.
Diet & Habitat
Opportunistic predators on prawns, crabs and small fish. Black jewfish live in estuaries and coastal water over mud, rubble and rock, from shallow creek mouths and rock bars out to reef in 100m, and push up tidal rivers. They form tight schools on favoured holes and have their own spawning grounds that the same fish return to year after year — stocks can be separate over just tens of kilometres, which is why one heavily fished hole can be emptied. In WA they run from around Onslow north through the Pilbara coast, Dampier, Port Hedland and Eighty Mile Beach, to Broome and Roebuck Bay, King Sound and Cambridge Gulf; the odd one turns up in Exmouth Gulf. There are none around Perth — the southern jewfish is mulloway.
WA Size & Bag Limits
| Minimum size | 70 cm |
|---|---|
| Bag limit | 2 |
| Counts toward | Counts within the statewide nearshore/estuarine finfish mixed daily limit of 16. Not a demersal scalefish in WA rules, so the demersal mixed bag of 4 does not apply, and there is no black jewfish boat limit — bag limits apply from a boat. WA's general finfish possession limit applies. |
Minimum size: 700mm. Individual daily bag limit: 2, counted within the statewide nearshore/estuarine finfish TOTAL mixed-species daily bag of 16. Black jewfish is not a demersal scalefish under WA rules, so the North Coast demersal mixed bag of 4 does not apply, and there is no species-specific boat limit — bag limits apply when fishing from a boat. The general finfish possession limit applies. A Recreational Fishing from Boat Licence (RFBL) is required when fishing from a powered boat. A release weight isn't legally required for this species, but DPIRD's barotrauma advice applies to it: don't target black jew for catch-and-release in deep water.
Eating Quality
Excellent — many northern anglers rate black jew a notch above mulloway. The flesh is white, firm and moist, with large flakes and a mild, clean flavour. Bleed at the gills and get it into an ice slurry straight away; in the northern heat that decides whether it's first-rate or ordinary. Fish in the 70–90cm range are the best eating, and very big fish coarsen through the thick part of the fillet. It suits almost anything — skin-on in a hot pan, thick cutlets on the barbecue, crumbed, curried, or fresh as sashimi. The wings and cheeks are worth keeping, and the fillets freeze well vac-sealed for a couple of months. The swim bladder is prized as fish maw in Asian cooking, but recreational catch can't be sold.
Perth Tips
Port Hedland Harbour, the deep holes off the Broome jetty and in Roebuck Bay, Cape Keraudren, the King Sound holes off Derby and Anthon's Landing at Wyndham are the recognised black jew water. Fish the neaps, not the big springs. Use circle hooks, and keep any fish you intend to release in shallow water. Once you have your two, stop fishing the deep hole rather than catching and releasing more. Watch for crocs at every creek mouth and ramp, and keep fish moving — sharks shadow jewfish schools.