Episode 253: St Georges Basin Tailor With Greg Reid

Reidy’s Basin Tailor Fishing Tips

• In recent years the years the tailor in St Georges Basin have had a revival and have grown steadily bigger in size. A few years ago large areas of 55-63 cm fish were busting the surface on mass, more recently the fish are larger and more solitary.
• Basin tailor are an all year-round species and although Greg has caught quality fish right through the year, he finds the winter months best for trophy tailor.
• A great advantage of tailor fishing is that they are often easy to find and willing to take lures when other species are shut down. Glassy, oily days are no problem. Time of day or phase of the tide aren’t important, tailor are there!
• There are three basic techniques:
  • Trolling with deep diving hard bodies. The exact lure is not important, as long as it gets deep. Larger lures (>120mm) are less likely to be swallowed whole and bitten off.
  • Trolling shallow hard bodies behind a downrigger has the advantage that the floating pieces of seagrass that often foul deep diving lures are less problematic.
  • Casting to fish that are actively feeding on the surface is all about seeing where a fish has slurped a bait from on or just beneath the surface and landing your lure within the disturbed water within 5 seconds.
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• Shore fishing for tailor is less reliable but is possible during the low light periods around dawn and dusk if you fish flats adjacent to deeper water.
• When trolling, just head for the middle of the basin and motor around until you find fish!

Reidy’s Preferred Tailor Fishing Tackle

• Reidy likes rods over 8’6” when casting, although he admits it’s hard to find a rod of that length that can handle both the light line and the relatively heavy lures (up to 50g). Shorter rods are fine for trolling.
• A rod in the 3-6 kg or 4-7 kg and 7’6” that can handle 20-50 g casting weights is ideal. Couple this with a 3000 size spin reel and 3-4lb braid and 10lb leader with a foot of 40-60lb mono bite tippet.

Reidy’s Tailor Fishing Lures

• 90mm Salmo Perch in Qantas colour (red head, white body) is a good choice. The Rapala Tailwalker or Atomic Shiner are good options also.
• The Rapala X-Rap shallow diver is a great option when trolling behind a downrigger bomb.
• For casting, the Little Jack Sayoris 120mm, 21g size is a great sinking stickbait. Greg casts it to a boil within 5 seconds of the disturbance and skips it across the surface with a few quick cranks, then lets is sink a second or two. Usually this gets the bite, but if not he’ll “burn and kill” the lure all the way back to the boat.
• The Jack Fin Stylo is a floating stickbait that can be cast long distances and worked quickly with a “walk the dog retrieve” to mimic a fleeing garfish.
• Raiders and other metal high-speed lures in the 20-50g range are also effective on tailor and are a fair bit cheaper but are also more likely to get swallowed and bitten off.