Skip to main content
Bite Compass
Surf / Offshore

Southern School Whiting

Sillago bassensis

Southern school whiting (Sillago bassensis) are the small barred whiting of the exposed surf beaches and open sand from Geraldton around the south coast — the school whiting of Albany, Esperance and the South West, and a regular off Perth's ocean beaches too. Sweet eating, no size limit, and bigger fish come from a boat drifting clean sand in 10–30 m.

Size
Up to 33cm, commonly 18–28cm
Peak season
Year-round
Minimum size (WA)
No minimum size
Bag limit (WA)
30 (per whiting species, excluding King George whiting)

Overview

Southern school whiting are the school whiting of WA's exposed coast — the small barred whiting that comes out of the surf gutters from Perth's ocean beaches down through the South West and right along the south coast to Esperance. They are the reason a 'sand whiting' caught off an Esperance or Albany beach is often a different fish from the one caught off a Rockingham jetty. Easy, willing and excellent on the plate, they reward a light paternoster and a bit of walking to find the school, and the bigger fish reward a boat.

Identification

Also known as School whiting, silver whiting (SA), red spot whiting, Bass Strait 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. The bars are the check: western school whiting — the Perth-to-Mandurah school whiting of sheltered water — carry a row of dusky blotches along the silver midline instead, which southern school whiting lack. Yellowfin whiting are plain silver with no bars and yellow pelvic and anal fins, and King George whiting are covered in spots. Anglers call all of these 'sand whiting' or 'school whiting' at one time or another, so look at the fish, not the name.

How to Catch

Best Baits

Small strips of squid, peeled prawn, beach worms, bloodworm, pipi

Lures

N/A — a bait fish. Very small soft plastics take the odd one, but bait is far more reliable.

Rigs

Two-hook paternoster with size 6–8 long-shank hooks and just enough sinker to hold bottom in the wash, on 4–8lb line. From a boat, the same paternoster with a heavier sinker to hold bottom on the drift in 10–30 m.

Technique

From the beach, find a gutter with clean sand and moving water, cast a small bait just past the first break and let it sit — the school finds you, and once one bites there are usually more. Keep bait small; they have small mouths and strip big baits. From a boat, drift clean open sand in 10–30 m and bounce a paternoster along the bottom, re-running the drift once you find fish.

Best Time

A session any time of day on a beach with clean water and a bit of run in the gutter is worth making. Juveniles crowd the surf zone of white-sand beaches through spring and summer, so the beach fishing is best in the warmer months; boat fish over the deeper sand are about year-round.

Size & Growth

Beach fish are mostly 15–22 cm juveniles and young adults; the bigger 25–32 cm fish have moved offshore onto the open sand of the inner shelf, which is why the good ones come from a boat. They mature at about 20 cm, commonly live to 7 years and reach about 10, and top out around 33 cm.

Diet & Habitat

Southern school whiting live close to the bottom over clean sand, picking amphipods, mysids, small crabs and other crustaceans off the bottom, with juveniles on copepods. Young fish use the surf zone of exposed white-sand beaches — Murdoch University's South West survey work found them in the waves and swell while the other whiting sat in sheltered water — and adults shift out to open sand at 20–35 m and deeper, to about 60 m. In WA they run from about Geraldton down the west coast, overlapping western school whiting through Perth and Mandurah, and around the whole south coast past Esperance; in SA they are the silver whiting of the gulfs, Kangaroo Island and the Adelaide beaches.

WA Size & Bag Limits

Minimum size No minimum size
Bag limit 30 (per whiting species, excluding King George whiting)
Counts toward Counts within the statewide all-other-finfish mixed daily limit of 30.

No minimum size. Daily bag limit: 30 per individual whiting species (excluding King George), Family Sillaginidae — DPIRD names southern school whiting in that group, and the limit applies to each species in it. All of them count within the statewide "all other species of finfish" total mixed bag of 30 per fisher, shared with herring, garfish and mullet. A Recreational Fishing from Boat Licence is needed to fish from a powered boat. In South Australia, where PIRSA calls it silver whiting, no size, bag or boat limit applies.

Last checked . Limits change — confirm with DPIRD before you fish.

Eating Quality

Excellent — the same sweet, fine-flaked white flesh as the other small whiting, with no oiliness and no bloodline. 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. Bleed and ice them straight away and eat them within a day or two; like all the small whiting they go soft and watery in the freezer.

Where to Catch Southern School Whiting

Albany (Emu Point / King George Sound / Salmon Holes) Bunbury Back Beach (Geographe Bay) Bunbury Koombana Bay (Inner Harbour / The Plug / Casuarina Boat Harbour) C.Y. O'Connor Beach (North Coogee) Coogee Beach Cottesloe Groyne Duke of Orleans Bay / Wharton Beach (Condingup) Esperance (Esperance Jetty / Bandy Creek / Cape Le Grand / Twilight Beach) Hamelin Bay Hopetoun (Mary Ann Haven / Two Mile / Four Mile / Starvation) Marmion Beach Middleton Beach (Albany) Myalup Beach Pemberton / Donnelly River Preston Beach (Yalgorup) Watermans Bay (Marmion Marine Park)
← All Species