Identifying…

Common names: Australian Bonito, Bonnie, Horse Mackerel or Striped Bonito.

Identifying features: The Australian Bonito is a very aesthetically pleasing fish with a dark bluey-green back, bright silver sides and dark longitudinal bands running from just below the fish's back down to its mid flanks. They also have a powerful mouth filled with small sharp teeth.

Size: Between 1 -8 kilograms. In Sydney Harbour they found in the 1-4kg range however most often found around the 0.8-1.5kg mark

Diet: Pre…

Size and lifecycle: The biggest male calamari recorded weighed in at 3.6 kg and had a dorsal mantle length of 550mm. These calamari live for less than a year meaning they put on between 5…

Common names: Reds, Reddies, Squire, Pinkies, Awesome, Tasty
Identifying features: Snapper are a stocky fish with a large forehead. They are pink thru to red in colour and are covered with blue incandescent spots.

Size: Snapper in Australia can grow to well over a metre in length and up to 20kg in weight. The current Australian record for Snapper is 18.4kg which was caught in Port Adelaide in South Australia.

Lifecycle: Squire (juvenile snapper) are found in inlets and bays often over mud and sea…

Dusky Flathead (Platycephalus fuscus)

Common names: frog, lizard, dinosaur, flattie, estuary flathead, mud flathead

Identifying features: With a dorsally compressed body shape and a flattened head, flat head are perhaps one of the easiest fish in the ocean to recognize. This body structure supports their feeding habits allowing them to lie submerged and camouflaged in sand, waiting for a prey item to swim over the top of them. From this position the flathead explodes and engulfs the prey with its…

Common names: Luderick, Darkie, Pacific Bream, Parore, Rock Perch

Identifying features: Blackfish can be recognised by having evenly arched dorsal and ventral profiles, small mouth and eye and a large tail. They have numerous dark vertical strips and in terms of colour can vary from a bronzed-grey with purple hue to a dull gun-metal grey.

Size: Blackfish can grow up to about 50cm and weigh over a kilo however they grow fairly slowly with a mature 5 year old fish being only 27cm in length.

Lifecycle…

Common names: black jew, black mulloway, blotched jew, mulloway, northern mulloway, spotted croaker, spotted jew, spotted jewfish

Identifying features: The black jewfish is a large long-bodied fish. They are black to bronze colour on top with silvery sides and a yellow underbelly. They have dark pectoral, pelvic and anal fins. As a juvenile they have many black spots on the upper half of the body as well as the caudal fin. They derive the name black jewfish partly because are they are darker than…

For this month i thought i would talk about a hard-fighting tropical sportfish which occasionally shows its broad, flattened head in Sydney Harbour... the Cobia

On an interesting note congratulations to James Reilly who landed a 1 metre, 8kg (estimation) Cobia whilst fishing for Kings in Middle Harbour with Craig. Just for the record this is the 6th or 7th caught by Fishabout in Sydney in 15 yrs of operation.

Cobia (Rachycentron canadum)

Common names: Black kingfish, Black Kingy, Cobe, Crab Eater…

Identifying features: The Giant Cuttlefish are hard to mistake with a thick solid mantle and a short stout head and tentacles. Like calamari, these Cuttlefish have control of their chromataphores (colour bearing pigment cells) and can subsequently change colour in less than a second. Most often these cuttlefish will be seen as a maroon colour however, during breeding season the males with adopt changing bright colours and striking patterns to dazzles the female cuttlefish.Size and lifecycle: The…