The banjo shark of the southern bays — a harmless, banded, guitar-shaped ray of sand and seagrass that eats the bottom baits meant for whiting, flathead and gummies. No stinging barb, just a row of thorns down the back.
Fiddler rays are the banded, harmless rays of WA's sheltered sand and seagrass — Cockburn Sound, the metropolitan jetties and marinas, and Geographe Bay out to Busselton Jetty — and most anglers meet one as the slow, heavy fish on a bait meant for something else. The WA fish is the southern fiddler ray, banjo shark to plenty of locals. It's edible and legal to keep within the sharks and rays bag, but most go back, and the job is to tell it from the stingrays that are protected here.
Identification
Also known asBanjo shark, banjo ray, banjo, fiddler, southern fiddler ray, Dumeril's shovelnose ray
A flattened, almost oval disc with a short, broadly rounded snout, then a thick, shark-like tail with two similar dorsal fins and a proper tail fin — no whip and no barb. The back is yellowish to brown with broad, dark-edged grey bands radiating from the eyes, three short parallel stripes just behind the eyes, and rows of thorns down the middle of the back and over the shoulders. The western shovelnose ray is the local mix-up: a wedge-shaped front end with a long, pointed snout, cloudy blotches and a dark mask around the eyes instead of bands. Black and smooth stingrays have a whip tail with a venomous barb, and both are protected from recreational fishing in the West Coast and South Coast bioregions.
How to Catch
Best Baits
Nobody needs a special bait. Squid, pilchard, prawn, crab and fish strips fished on the bottom all get eaten, which is how most fiddler rays are caught.
Lures
N/A — fiddler rays find a bait on the sand, not a lure.
Rigs
No dedicated rig: whatever bottom rig is out for whiting, tarwhine or a mulloway is what they take. They crush rather than cut, so mono is fine — which suits the wire-trace bans anyway: within 800 m of shore from Tim's Thicket to Two Rocks, the whole Swan-Canning estuary, around Busselton Jetty and along the Busselton foreshore, and at Esperance Jetty. A circle hook usually lodges in the corner of the mouth and makes the release quick.
Technique
A hooked fiddler ray is a heavy, slow weight that hugs the bottom rather than a runner. Keep steady pressure and bring it into the shallows or a landing net rather than hauling it up a jetty by the line. If it's going back, unhook it in the water where you can, keep fingers clear of the thorns along the back and shoulders, and support the body rather than lifting it by the tail.
Best Time
Caught by day and after dark, year-round. Divers photograph them over the sand and around jetty pylons in daylight, anglers meet them at night on shark and mulloway baits, and a tracking study of the east-coast species found it busiest by day on a reef. With signs pointing both ways, the bite times lean neither way and are a soft guide.
Size & Growth
In south-western Australian waters females grow to about 1.46 m and males to about 0.9 m, and half are mature by about 89 cm and 68 cm respectively. They live to about 15 years. Females carry two to five pups for about a year, with the embryos' growth held back until the last few months, and give birth in April and May — still-warm water for the pups. Late maturity and small litters are why big females are worth putting back.
Diet & Habitat
Fiddler rays live on sand flats and in seagrass beds, often next to reef, from the shallows out across the continental shelf; in WA they're found mostly from Lancelin south, with survey records further north off Jurien Bay and in the Abrolhos, and right along the south coast to the Recherche. They eat mostly crustaceans, then small fish, worms and molluscs, crushing shells with rows of small, blunt teeth, and the diet shifts with the seasons. They scavenge too, so a bait left on the sand is fair game.
WA Size & Bag Limits
Minimum size
No minimum size
Bag limit
3 (the shared sharks and rays limit)
Counts toward
Counts within the statewide sharks and rays mixed daily bag of 3, separate from the large pelagic finfish bag. All rays and skates, fiddlers included, are protected in the Hamelin Bay Protection Area.
Fiddler rays are rays (Class Chondrichthyes) and fall within the statewide sharks and rays mixed daily bag of 3, separated out of the large pelagic finfish bag in the 2026 reforms. There is no minimum or maximum size and no separate individual limit, so the 3 is shared with any gummy, whaler or other shark or ray you keep that day, and there is no boat limit — bag limits apply when fishing from a boat. All ray and skate species are protected in the Hamelin Bay Protection Area, fiddlers included. Black and smooth stingrays are protected from recreational fishing in the West Coast and South Coast bioregions, so be sure what you have before you keep any ray. The general finfish possession limit applies. No licence is needed to fish from the shore; a Recreational Fishing from Boat Licence (RFBL) is required when fishing from a powered boat.
Last checked . Limits change —
confirm with DPIRD
before you fish.
Eating Quality
Edible, with meat often compared to gummy shark, but most anglers let them go because a fiddler gives little meat for the work. As with other guitarfish, the part worth eating is the thick tail, skinned and taken off the cartilage. Bleed and ice it straight away, as with any shark or ray, or the flesh picks up an ammonia smell.