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Bite Compass
Shore / Estuary

Western School Whiting

Sillago vittata

School whiting — western school whiting (Sillago vittata) — are the small, abundant whiting you'll catch on Perth's sandy beaches and shallow estuary flats year-round. Not as big as their King George cousins and not the estuary-loving yellowfin whiting, but every bit as good on the plate. Willing biters on worms and prawns, and very often the first fish a kid lands.

Size
Up to 30cm, commonly 15–25cm
Peak season
Year-round
Minimum size (WA)
No minimum size
Bag limit (WA)
30 (per whiting species, excluding King George whiting)

Overview

Western school whiting are the bread-and-butter whiting species in Perth — smaller than their King George cousins but just as good on the plate. Found on sandy beaches and shallow estuary flats year-round, they're abundant, willing biters, and the perfect target for a relaxed family fishing session. They're also often the first fish that gets kids excited about fishing.

Identification

Also known as School whiting, western school whiting

A small, slim whiting, sandy-gold over the back and silver-white below, with a row of dusky blotches or short bars along the midline that fade quickly once the fish is dead. King George whiting are far larger, with rows of reddish-brown spots on a longer, more tapered body. Yellowfin whiting are plain silver with no flank markings and obviously yellow pelvic and anal fins. Note the name trap: in WA, 'sand whiting' is usually shorthand for yellowfin whiting, while this fish is properly the western school whiting. Most anglers call the lot 'whiting' and sort them out at the cleaning table.

How to Catch

Best Baits

Tube worms, beach worms, prawns, pipis

Lures

N/A — bait-only species. Stick to fresh natural baits for best results.

Rigs

Running sinker rig with a size 6–8 long-shank hook and a small ball sinker. Use light line (4–6lb) and keep the rig simple. A paternoster with two small hooks is effective for catching a quick feed.

Technique

Cast into sandy gutters and shallow flats and let the bait sit on the bottom. School whiting cruise the shallows feeding on worms and small crustaceans, so positioning your bait in the sandy patches between weed is key. Walk the beach and fan-cast to find where the fish are — once you find them, there are usually plenty around.

Best Time

Caught through the day on the shallow flats, but no published study times their feeding, so dawn and dusk are the windows the score shows. Anglers find a rising tide that floods the sandy shallows brings whiting in to feed. Calm, warm days are most productive.

Size & Growth

Most are 15–25 cm and a couple of hundred grams at best; 30 cm is about as big as they get, and a 25 cm school whiting is a good one. They mature small and breed readily, which is why they are so abundant — a beach that fishes well one summer usually fishes well the next. Do not come looking for a trophy. A realistic session is a dozen or two fish in the 18–22 cm range, which is exactly enough for a family feed and roughly the scale the bag limit is built around.

Diet & Habitat

School whiting work clean sand for polychaete worms, small crustaceans, amphipods and bivalve siphons, nosing along the bottom in loose schools. They hold over open sand and in the sandy patches between weed beds, usually in 1–20 m and very often inside the first gutter — you do not need to cast far. Endemic to the WA west coast, running from about Coral Bay (Maud Landing) south to Perth and the Peel-Harvey, with the Perth-to-Mandurah beaches the heart of it; south of there the school whiting is the southern school whiting. Sandy stretches around Rockingham, Secret Harbour, Singleton and Tim's Thicket hold them year-round, as do the shallow flats inside Cockburn Sound.

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 — the limit applies to each species in the group, all counted within the statewide "all other finfish" total mixed bag of 30 per fisher.

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

Eating Quality

Yes — pound for pound some of the sweetest eating in Perth. Delicate, white, faintly sweet flesh with a fine flake and no oiliness at all, and no meaningful difference between a big one and a small one. They are usually too small to fillet, so scale, gut and pan-fry them whole in butter, or crumb them and shallow-fry — two minutes a side and no longer, because there is not much to them. The skin crisps nicely and the frame lifts out in one piece when you cook them whole. Bleed and ice them like anything else. They do not freeze well; the flesh is too delicate and comes out watery. A bucket of school whiting makes a cracking feed, and the kids who caught them will actually eat it.

Where to Catch Western School Whiting

Alkimos Beach (Shorehaven) Burns Beach C.Y. O'Connor Beach (North Coogee) Carnarvon (Town Beach / Babbage Island / Quobba) Cervantes (Jetty / Hangover Bay / Thirsty Point) Challenger Beach (Naval Base) City Beach Groyne Coodanup Foreshore (Peel Inlet) Coogee Beach Cottesloe Groyne Denham (Shark Bay) Dongara / Port Denison (Harbour / Granny's Beach / South Beach / Irwin River Mouth) Falcon Bay Floreat Beach (Floreat Drain) Geraldton (Fisherman's Wharf / Separation Point) Golden Bay Green Head / Leeman (Dynamite Bay & Jetties) Greenough River Mouth (Cape Burney) Guilderton (Moore River Mouth) Halls Head Hangover Bay (Nambung National Park) Herron Point (Harvey Estuary) Hillarys Boat Harbour Horrocks Beach Jurien Bay (Jetty & Marina Walls) Lancelin (Jetty & Back Beach) Ledge Point (Beach, Groyne & Reef) Leighton Beach Madora Bay Mandurah Town Beach Mangles Bay (Rockingham) Marmion Beach Mettams Pool Mullaloo Beach Palm Beach Jetty (Rockingham) Pinnaroo Point (Hillarys) Pipidinny Beach Port Beach (North Fremantle) Port Gregory (Harbour / Foreshore Jetty / North & South Beaches) Quinns Rocks Rockingham Jetty Safety Bay San Remo Beach Scarborough Beach Seabird Secret Harbour Shoalwater Beach Singleton Beach Sorrento Beach South Beach (Fremantle) Swanbourne Beach Tim's Thicket Trigg Beach Warnbro Beach Watermans Bay (Marmion Marine Park) Wedge Island & Grey (4WD Beaches) Yanchep Beach (Capricorn) Yanchep Lagoon

Guides Featuring Western School Whiting

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