Where and when to catch Rock Blackfish in New South Wales: the NSW season, the spots in our guide that hold them, and where to find NSW's current size and bag limits.
Rock blackfish, or drummer, or 'pigs' to the people who chase them, are the heavyweight fish of the NSW ocean rocks. They live in the white water along every headland and rock platform on the coast, sit under ledges and in caves through the day, and come out to feed in the wash on bread, cabbage, cunjevoi and crabs. Hooking one is easy. Getting it out from under the ledge on a 30 lb line is the whole sport, and the cooler months, when the swell is up and the fish are in the wash, are the best of it.
Western Australian limits don't apply in New South Wales.
Where to Catch Rock Blackfish in NSW
Drummer hold on exposed ocean rock platforms, headlands and reef ledges with wash and white water. The spots below list them. Every one is a rock platform: check the swell, tide and wind forecasts before you go and read the conditions when you arrive.
Cunjevoi (cut from the rocks where it's allowed), cabbage (sea lettuce), red crabs and bait crabs, peeled prawn, and bread in the wash, either as bait or as berley. Green weed takes fish too, especially in calmer water.
Lures
Not a lure fish. Almost all are taken on bait.
Rigs
Heavy and simple: a stiff 3–4 m rock rod, a big threadline or Alvey sidecast, and 15–30 lb line straight through. Use a small running ball sinker sitting right on top of a strong size 1–4/0 hook, or no sinker at all in the wash, so the bait sinks naturally. A float rig with a heavier float works for cabbage. Light gear doesn't land these fish; it just loses rigs.
Technique
Fish the white water. Berley with bread or crushed cunjevoi mixed with sand, let the wash carry it down into the gutter or under the ledge, then drop the bait into the berley trail and let it sink with the surge. A take is often a sharp pull or the line just tightening. When one bites, lift and hold hard immediately: the first run is straight back into the rocks or the cave it came from, and the fight is won or lost in the first few seconds. Use a long-handled gaff or a big landing net, and never step down to grab a fish on a wet ledge.
Best Time
Wash matters more than the hour. A platform with surge and some white water fishes far better than a flat one at any time of day, with dawn and dusk usually the best. They're caught all year, with the cooler months the main season. Read the swell forecast and the tide before you go, and if the sea is breaking over the ledge you planned to stand on, go somewhere else.
Under the Rock Fishing Safety Act, a lifejacket is compulsory on ocean rock platforms in declared areas, which include many of the rock spots listed here (declared council areas include the Central Coast, Lake Macquarie, Port Stephens, Northern Beaches, Randwick, Sutherland Shire and Wollongong). Check the declared-area list before you go, and wear one everywhere else too.
Identification
Also known asDrummer, black drummer, pig, rock fish
A deep, heavy, oval fish with a small head, a small mouth and a big broad tail. Adults are uniformly dark bluish-grey to black all over, with a black edge along the rear of the gill cover and no bars. Juveniles are mottled, with dark divided bands across the back. Luderick are slimmer and carry about a dozen narrow dark vertical bars. Silver drummer (Kyphosus) are silvery-grey rather than black, and have fewer dorsal spines (11 against 13). Rock blackfish have rows of small, flattened three-pointed teeth for cropping weed, the same tooth design as luderick.
Size & Growth
Most fish taken off the rocks are 35–50 cm and 1–3 kg. A 4 kg fish is a very good one, anything over 5 kg is a trophy that has probably already been through the wash a few times, and the recorded maximum is about 76 cm and 9 kg.
Diet & Habitat
An omnivore that grazes weed (cabbage and other green and red algae) and eats crabs, cunjevoi, worms and other small invertebrates picked off the rocks. Rock blackfish live on exposed rocky reefs from the wash zone down to about 25 m, often in turbulent white water, and school under ledges, around boulders and in caves and gutters, sheltering there through the day. Juveniles stay in more sheltered water: seagrass beds, rock pools and protected reef.
Eating Quality
Good, if handled right. Bleed and gut immediately, skin the fillets, and cut out the dark lateral line and belly fat; done that way the flesh is white and firm, and good crumbed, battered or in a curry. Leave the gut in or let it sit in a warm bucket and it turns weedy fast. Best eaten fresh, and like their cousins the luderick, the smaller fish are the better eating.