Also known as Kingie, Hoodlum, Yellowtail Amberjack, Southern Yellowtail. Bait, technique, tide windows, and where the bite is on right now.
Yellowtail Kingfish — Apex pelagic brawler of southern AU and northern NZ. Also called Kingie, Hoodlum, Yellowtail Amberjack, Southern Yellowtail.
A trophy yellowtail kingfish over 1.2 m is twenty years old. The bite-to-burial time when one hits a jig over a reef bommie is under five seconds. Set the drag locked, or accept the loss before you start.
Yellowtail Kingfish is also known as: Kingie, Hoodlum, Yellowtail Amberjack, Southern Yellowtail. Apex pelagic brawler of southern AU and northern NZ.
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 Yellowtail Kingfish is in season for June. Click through for the live forecast.
Out of season across our covered spots in June. Check back in July.
Deeper reading on the species, the tides, the safety, and the timing windows behind the forecast.
For inshore kings, find the bait first — yakka schools over inshore reef bommies, kelp edges, breakwall corners and harbour markers. Anchor up-current and slow-troll or live-bait a slimy in the berley trail; the strike is unmistakable. For offshore kings, knife-jigging vertical structure (FADs, deep wrecks, current lines) in 50–200 m is the most productive method in Australia. Use minimum 50–80 lb braid with a 80–130 lb fluorocarbon leader and lock the drag — kings will bury you in the reef inside 5 seconds.
Tide-change windows on a moving tide are critical. The first two hours of a run-in tide on a moderate flow (1.5–2.5 knots through harbour markers, for instance) brings bait up and the kings follow. Slack water is dead. On deep offshore wrecks the slack period is actually the best time to get a jig down cleanly — opposite of inshore.
New moon and full moon spring tides are the classic "kingie tides" — strong current pushes bait, kings actively hunt. The two days after the moon phase tend to fish better than the day-of (current peaks a day late). Solunar major periods overlap dawn/dusk in summer, which is when most trophy kings are landed.
NSW: 65 cm minimum, bag of 5 (NSW DPIRD Recreational Saltwater Fishing Guide 2024-25). WA: 60 cm, bag of 2 for most zones. VIC: 60 cm. Trophy kings 1.2 m+ are 20+ years old — strongly consider releasing the big ones for the next generation. Always verify the current state rule before keeping fish.
NSW size & bag limits for Yellowtail Kingfish — 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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