Silver Trevally
Where and when to catch Silver Trevally in Victoria: the VIC season, the spots in our guide that hold them, and where to find VIC's current size and bag limits. Called Skipjack Trevally (Skippy) on our Western Australian guide.
- Size
- Over 90cm offshore, commonly 400–800g at the jetties
- VIC season
- Year-round (best Oct–May)
- VIC spots
- 68
VIC Size & Bag Limits
VIC limits for Silver Trevally are set by VFA and change from time to time, so we link them rather than copy them. Check VFA's limits before you fish.
Western Australian limits don't apply in Victoria.
Where to Catch Silver Trevally in VIC
Melbourne & Hobsons Bay
Bayside & Frankston
Mornington Peninsula
Geelong & Bellarine
Western Port & Phillip Island
Surf Coast & Great Ocean Road
Shipwreck Coast & South West
South Gippsland
Gippsland Lakes & East
How to Catch
Best Baits
Peeled prawn, pilchard strips, squid strips, pipis and cockles, beach and tube worms, bread in a berley trail
Lures
Small soft plastics (grubs and minnows), small metal slices, micro jigs, bait jigs, small blades
Rigs
A light running sinker or paternoster rig with size 4–1 hooks for the bottom, or a lightly weighted float rig drifted down a berley trail. 3–6 kg line and a fluorocarbon leader; trevally can be line-shy in clear water. Their mouths are soft, so a long, forgiving rod and a light drag land more of them.
Technique
Berley and fish light. A steady trickle of chopped pilchard, bread or pollard brings a school up from the bottom and holds it, and an unweighted or lightly weighted bait drifted down the trail is deadly. On lures, hop a small plastic or blade slowly along the bottom beside the pylons or the edge of the reef. Hooked fish run hard and circle; don't horse them or the hook tears out.
Best Time
Through the day, especially around the tide changes and on a moving tide. Morning and afternoon sessions are usually best, and they'll feed after dark under lights. They're caught year-round, with the local peak varying by coast.
Identification
Also known as Skippy, silver trevally, white trevally, sand trevally
A deep, flattened silver fish with a greenish-blue back, a soft dark smudge on the upper edge of the gill cover, and the row of hard bony scutes along the rear of the lateral line that every trevally carries. Juveniles and sub-adults usually show a yellow stripe along the middle of the flank and yellow along the fin bases, and the long, scythe-shaped pectoral fins reach back almost to the tail. The fish easily mistaken for it is the small true skipjack trevally, a separate species that rarely passes 20 cm and has a small, sharply defined black gill spot and no yellow stripe. Small silvers also get called skippy, white trevally and silver bream depending on where you are.
Size & Growth
Shore and jetty fish are mostly 25–40 cm and 300 g to a kilo. A 50 cm fish is a good one, anything over 3 kg will make a mess of light line, and the species passes 90 cm on deep offshore ground. They're slow-growing and long-lived, past 20 years and recorded at over 45, so a big silver is an old fish and worth a thought before it goes in the esky. The bigger fish move to deeper water off headlands and offshore reef as they age.
Diet & Habitat
Silver trevally eat small crustaceans, worms, prawns, molluscs and small fish, picking at the bottom and the sand around reef as often as chasing bait mid-water; their soft, toothless mouths are built for hoovering. They school around reef, rubble, weed edges, jetty pylons, breakwalls and harbour walls, and push into estuaries and channels on the tide. Juveniles stay close to shallow reef; adults favour the deeper water off headlands.
Eating Quality
Good eating with a little care. The flesh is white and firm with a stronger flavour than whiting and a dark strip down the fillet worth trimming. Bleed and ice them immediately; trevally left warm on a jetty go soft and metallic. Smaller fish are the sweeter eat. Crumb or batter the fillets, grill them skin-on, or use them in a curry. Very fresh, well-bled fish are excellent as sashimi. They freeze better than oily fish, though the texture firms up, so use frozen fillets for crumbing.
Silver Trevally elsewhere: Western Australia · South Australia · New South Wales