Fishing Bait Guide: The Best Baits for Australian Fish

Bait is the simplest way to catch a fish and the easiest to get wrong. A soft, sun-warmed pilchard flies off on the cast. A big glob of prawn on an oversized hook gets stripped by pickers while the bream you wanted swim past. Most bait problems come down to freshness, size and presentation, not the bait itself.

This guide covers fresh, frozen and live bait, the main baits and what they catch, how to rig each one, collecting your own, keeping it fresh, and burley. For where and when to fish it, see our fishing techniques guide.

Fresh, Frozen or Live: Which Bait Is Best?

Live beats fresh, and fresh beats frozen, but good frozen bait still catches plenty of fish.

The difference is scent and texture. Freshly killed bait still leaks natural oils and blood, and it’s firm enough to survive a cast. Frozen bait loses juice as it thaws and goes soft. Live bait adds movement and distress signals, which is what big predators like mulloway, kingfish and flathead key on.

When you buy frozen, buy it from a tackle or bait shop rather than a servo freezer that’s been opened all day. Good frozen pilchards have bright eyes, firm bodies and silver skin. Yellowed flesh, broken bellies and freezer burn mean the bait’s been thawed and refrozen. Regulars on the forums say the same thing: frozen pillies are the easiest buy, rarely the best one.

What Are the Best Baits and What Do They Catch?

Pilchards, squid, prawns, nippers, worms, pipis and fresh fish flesh cover most saltwater fish.

In freshwater, worms, yabbies and shrimp do most of the work. The table below is a starting point. What the fish are eating locally always wins, so ask at the nearest tackle shop, and check our species guides for what each fish feeds on.

Pilchards (mulies)

Pilchards, called mulies in WA, are soft, oily and strong-smelling, which is exactly why they work. Fish them whole on gang hooks for tailor and salmon, or cut them into halves and 1-2cm cubes for snapper and bream. In WA they’re the first bait most anglers reach for, and they’re the main bait in our Carnarvon tailor guide. Keep them cold, because a warm pilly falls apart.

Squid

Squid is white, tough and holds scent, so it survives pickers and long casts. Long tapered strips suit snapper and flathead, tentacles suit whiting, and a whole squid head is a classic mulloway bait. Fresh-caught calamari or arrow squid is far better than cheap frozen squid, so it’s worth catching your own.

To prep it, cut the tube open, scrape it clean and slice it into tapered strips about 1cm wide and 8-10cm long. The thin end flutters in the current, and the thick end holds the hook.

Prawns

Prawns catch almost everything that swims in an estuary. Live prawns are deadly on bream, flathead and jacks. Dead prawns work best fresh or bait-shop frozen, threaded on so the hook point comes out near the head.

Nippers, worms and pipis

These are the natural foods of estuary flats and surf beaches, which makes them the best baits for whiting and bream:

• Nippers (pink saltwater yabbies) live in burrows on sand and mud flats. Bream, whiting and flathead find them hard to resist.
• Beachworms live in the wash zone of surf beaches, especially on the east coast. Fresh ones are arguably the best surf whiting bait there is.
• Bloodworms are dug from estuary mud and are usually bought from bait shops. Whiting and bream love them.
• Pipis and cockles live in the sand at the water’s edge of ocean beaches. Surf anglers on K’gari (Fraser Island) gather them to catch whiting and dart, then cut those into fresh baits for tailor.

Fresh fish flesh and live bait

A fresh mullet fillet is tough, oily and stays on through heavy surf, so it’s a favourite for tailor, mulloway and snapper. Bonito and tuna strips are bloody and oily, ideal for snapper and mackerel. Whole garfish suit tailor and mackerel.

For live bait, yellowtail scad (yakkas), slimy mackerel, herring and poddy mullet are the standards. A lively bait sends out vibrations a dead one can’t, and that’s what switches on big mulloway and kingfish. Small poddy mullet suit flathead, while bigger yakkas and slimies suit mulloway and kingfish. Handle them as little as possible with wet hands, because a bait that’s been squeezed won’t swim for long.

Tough oddballs work too. Chicken thigh marinated in tuna oil has a following among Gascoyne tailor anglers because pickers struggle to strip it, and bread dough is the go-to for mullet.

Freshwater baits

Scrub worms and garden worms catch nearly every native freshwater fish. Yabbies are the classic bait for Murray cod and golden perch, as covered in our Glenlyon Dam golden perch guide, and freshwater shrimp are excellent for golden perch and bass.

Freshwater live-bait rules are strict. In NSW, for example, you can’t use live fish as bait in inland waters, and live carp and redfin can never be used as bait. Enclosed opera house yabby nets are banned in most states because they drown platypus and turtles, so use an open-top lift net where yabbying is allowed.

How Should You Rig Each Bait?

Hide most of the hook, leave the point exposed, and make the bait sit straight in the current.

A buried hook point misses fish, and a bait that spins looks wrong and twists your line. Match the hook size to the fish’s mouth, not the size of the bait you’d like to use.

• Half pilchard or cubes: a single 2/0-4/0 hook through the backbone twice.
• Squid strip: hook once through the thick end so the tail flutters, on a 1/0-4/0.
• Prawn: thread from the tail along the body and bring the point out under the head, size 4 to 1/0. Hook live prawns lightly through the tail or under the horn.
• Nipper: hook through the tail end so the body stays free to move, size 4 to 1.
• Worms: thread onto a long-shank size 6 to 1 hook, leaving 2-3cm hanging free.
• Pipi: push the hook through the tough foot first, then the softer flesh. Bait thread helps.
• Fish strip: cut a long, tapered strip with the skin on and hook it once or twice through the thick end.
• Live baitfish: hook through both lips or the nose, or just behind the dorsal fin above the spine, with a hook matched to the bait.

Full rig builds are in our fishing rigs guide, and the knots to tie them in fishing knots.

Size the bait to the fish

A big bait doesn’t mean a big fish. Small fish and pickers strip an oversized bait long before a good fish finds it, and a fish that can’t fit the bait in its mouth often grabs the end and misses the hook. Size the bait so your target can eat it in one go:

• Whiting and bream: a 2-3cm piece of worm, a single nipper or a peeled prawn tail on a size 6 to 1 hook and a 4-6lb leader.
• Flathead: a 5-8cm squid strip, a whole small prawn or a whitebait on a 1/0 to 2/0 hook.
• Snapper: half a pilchard or a 6-10cm squid strip on 3/0 to 5/0 hooks, stepping up to whole baits for big reds.
• Tailor and salmon: a whole pilchard or garfish on a 3/0 to 4/0 gang.
• Mulloway: a whole squid head, a 15-20cm fillet strip or a live mullet or yakka on a 6/0 to 8/0 hook.

How Do You Collect Your Own Bait?

Pump nippers on flats at low tide, catch beachworms and pipis in the wash, jig squid over weed, and catch baitfish on small bait jigs.

Self-caught bait is fresher than anything you can buy, and gathering it is often the most fun part of the trip. Check the rules first, though, because bait collecting is regulated almost everywhere.

Pumping nippers

Beachworms and pipis

Beachworms take practice. Drag a stink bag, an onion bag stuffed with fish frames or pilchards, through the wash as a wave runs back. When a worm pokes its head up, offer it a small piece of pipi between your finger and thumb. As it grabs the bait and stretches up, pinch it just behind the head and ease it out with steady pressure. Too slow and it’s gone back into the sand.

For pipis, twist your feet into the wet sand at the water’s edge on a falling tide and feel for the shells. Rules on pipis vary a lot between states and beaches, so check before you gather any. Either way, you’re bent over in the wash with your back to the sea, so glance up at every set and read our fishing safety guide if you’re new to surf beaches.

Squid and baitfish

For squid, cast a size 2.5-3.5 squid jig over weed beds in 2-6m of water. Let it sink, give it two or three sharp lifts, then pause. Most squid grab it on the pause. Dawn, dusk and jetty lights at night are best.

For live baitfish, small multi-hook bait jigs (sabikis) tipped with a sliver of bait catch yakkas, slimies and herring under a little burley around wharves, moorings and reef. Get them into an aerated bait tank straight away.

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How Do You Keep Bait Fresh?

Keep bait cold, dry and out of the sun from the moment you buy or catch it.

Fresh water is the enemy of dead bait. Melted ice soaks into pilchards and squid and turns them to mush, so keep bait in sealed bags or containers on top of the ice, not swimming in it.

• Thaw slowly in the esky, not in the sun or a bucket of tap water, and only thaw what you’ll use.
• Don’t refreeze thawed bait. It comes back softer each time.
• Salt it. Layer pilchards, fish strips or leftover prawns in a container with about 1cm of coarse salt between layers, and leave them a few hours or overnight. The salt draws out water, so they toughen up, stay on the hook and keep for days.
• Use a bait board in the shade and only have a few baits out at once.
• Keep live bait cool and aerated. Nippers last a few hours in plain seawater and several days with an aerator, regular water changes and a bucket that isn’t overcrowded.
• Bin the leftovers. Don’t tip unused bait into the water; it’s littering and can spread disease.

What Burley Works Best?

Bread, pellets or pollard soaked in seawater, with fish oil and chopped pilchards, draws in most fish.

Burley works three ways: particles sinking through the water, an oil slick on the surface and scent drifting down-current. Together they draw fish in and get them competing. The trick is little and often. Too much and the fish fill up on burley instead of your bait.

For a starter mix, break half a loaf of stale bread into a bucket, add a couple of handfuls of pollard or soaked pellets and a good splash of tuna oil, then stir in seawater until it’s like sloppy porridge. Throw a golf-ball-sized handful every three to five minutes. If fish arrive and then go quiet, ease off; if nothing shows within 20 minutes, move rather than throwing more.

Bread and tuna oil is the simplest place to start, and it’s the backbone of our Margaret River mullet guide. Pollard is the WA standard for herring, as in our Perth herring guide, and the pilchard cube trail in our Shoal Bay snapper guide shows how to keep snapper feeding up a trail.

From a boat, a burley pot hung over the side does the work for you. In the surf, throw it as a wave runs back so the backwash carries it out. And the supermarket prawn rule applies to burley too: only bait-shop or self-caught prawns go in the mix.

Your Questions About Fishing Bait

What is the best all-round fishing bait?

Can I use supermarket prawns as bait?

Is fresh bait really better than frozen?

How do you keep nippers alive?

Do I need a licence to collect bait?

How do I stop bait falling off the hook?

What is the best bait for whiting and bream?

What bait is best for mulloway?

Can you refreeze bait?

What bait works best in freshwater?

Got your bait sorted? Learn when to fish it in the tides section of our techniques guide, build the right rig with our fishing rigs guide, and find somewhere to use it among our fishing spots.