Also known as Chopper, Bluefish (US), Choppertail. Bait, technique, tide windows, and where the bite is on right now.
Tailor — Aggressive beach/headland surface predator — winter NSW classic. Also called Chopper, Bluefish (US), Choppertail.
Tailor will shred 30 lb mono with their teeth on the first run. Wire trace is not optional if you intend to land them — and undersize fish in NSW cannot be used as bait, must be returned alive, even if injured. The species was named for its scissor-action jaws.
Tailor is also known as: Chopper, Bluefish (US), Choppertail. Aggressive beach/headland surface predator — winter NSW classic.
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 Tailor 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.
Beach: cast metal slugs into the back of the breakers from a sand gutter at dawn or dusk, fast retrieve with rod tip high — tailor smash chrome. Headland: ganged pilchards float-rigged or cast unweighted into the wash, drifted with the current along the bommie edge. Look for bird activity — diving terns mean tailor are pushing bait to the surface underneath. Always use wire trace if you want to land them — their teeth shred 30 lb mono.
Last two hours of the run-up tide into a sand gutter is the textbook beach window — bait gets funnelled into the gutter and tailor patrol it. Dawn and dusk override tide importance: a low slack at sunrise will still fish better than a high tide at midday.
Tailor are famously strong on the new moon and the dark of the moon — Fraser Island's legendary "tailor run" peaks around new moon nights and the dawn following. Dark nights with phosphorescence in the water often produce hot night sessions off ocean rocks (with appropriate safety — never alone, never in big swell).
NSW: 30 cm minimum, bag of 10, possession limit of 20 (NSW DPIRD Recreational Saltwater Fishing Guide 2024-25). QLD: 30 cm, bag of 20. WA: 25 cm, bag of 8. Tailor are oily and best eaten fresh — they don't freeze well. Undersize fish cannot be used as bait and must be returned to the water immediately, even if injured or dead.
NSW size & bag limits for Tailor — 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.
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