Also known as Jewfish, Jewie, Silver Ghost, Butterfish (juveniles). Bait, technique, tide windows, and where the bite is on right now.
Mulloway — Nocturnal estuary-and-beach ghost — the patience fish. Also called Jewfish, Jewie, Silver Ghost, Butterfish (juveniles).
One bite a night is a normal session. The take is a slow nodding pull — three or four heavy nods, not a hit — and easy to miss if you set on the first knock. The NSW bag was tightened from 2 to 1 in recent years; the population was being pulled apart by anglers fishing pressure-trained holes.
Mulloway is also known as: Jewfish, Jewie, Silver Ghost, Butterfish (juveniles). Nocturnal estuary-and-beach ghost — the patience fish.
Regional names can confuse anglers and cause misidentification. The table of common names below covers the most-used alternatives across Australia, New Zealand and the US:
Key to correct identification: check the regulations-authority species sheet for your state or territory before keeping any fish — minimum legal sizes, bag limits and identification guides are published by each fisheries department and are the authoritative source.
Hero spots in our coverage where Mulloway is in season for June. Click through for the live forecast.
Deeper reading on the species, the tides, the safety, and the timing windows behind the forecast.
Estuary: cast big soft vibes (Samaki Vibelicious is the NSW gold standard) at deep holes, bridge pylons and rock wall corners on a slow lift-pause-drop retrieve. Most jewies hit on the drop. Beach: anchor a big fresh bait on a paternoster rig in a gutter at night, sit still, wait — the bite is unmistakable, a slow heavy nod-nod-NOD. Patience is the entire game with mulloway. One bite a night on a good night is normal.
Mulloway are textbook tide-change feeders. The last hour of the tide turning and the first hour of the new direction is the window. In rivers, the bottom of the tide is when they pull into the deepest holes to wait out the slack. On beaches, fish the rising tide into a deep gutter at night.
Big mulloway are notoriously linked to the dark of the moon — the three or four nights either side of the new moon, particularly when matched with cloudy nights and a small swell on the beach. Full-moon bright nights tend to shut the bigger fish down (or push them deeper). Solunar minor at the tide change beats solunar major at slack water.
NSW: 70 cm minimum, bag of 1 per person, boat limit of 2 mulloway when two or more anglers are on board, charter boat limit of 3 per day (NSW DPIRD Recreational Saltwater Fishing Guide 2024-25). QLD: 75 cm, bag of 2. WA: 50 cm, bag of 2 north of 26°30'S. Mulloway populations are pressured — the NSW bag was tightened from 2 to 1 recently. Big mulloway 1.3 m+ are 20-30 year-old breeders. Release the big ones where you can.
NSW size & bag limits for Mulloway — current DPIRD limits, verified →
From our training corpus of ~1.1M angler-logged catches across 14 regions. Last refreshed 2026-05-18.
Olli-Mikael Vaittinen has fished his whole life. Fifteen years of fly fishing, guiding seasons on Norway's Lakselva — his favourite Atlantic salmon river — and a blue marlin landed in Vava'u, Tonga. Founder of Fishare — the app that puts the data behind the decisions every angler makes on the water.
Fishare tracks your home spots and pings you when the next 3-hour peak window opens. Log catches and blanks to teach the model your local patterns. Free forever for everyone who joins now.
Open Fishare