Fish Fact File, Whiting

Fish Name: Sand Whiting

Common Names: summer whiting, silver whiting, yellow finned whiting.

Description:

A small elongated fish lacking the spots of a king George whiting. They have a golden yellow back but can often be more of a grey. They have bright underbellies with a yellow tinge on the tail and the fins. Large fish over 0.7kg have a blue tinge around their nose.

Feeding Habits:

 Whiting are loosely schooled and forage in shallow water. Sand whiting mainly eat smaller crustaceans and the like such as sand crabs along with worms and yabbies and even small prawns.

Size:

Most whiting are between 15 and 25 centimetres long with an occasional few reaching into the late thirties. Loss of large oversized whiting is mainly due to over fishing and people taking undersized whiting, often cast netters also use them as live baits for bigger fish.

Fishing Techniques:

Bait:

Bait is the best way to catch these shallow water foragers. Live prawns, dead prawn, live yabbies, live works, dead worms, pippies and crabs, whiting eat it all. The best bait for me to date is a segment of frozen prawn on the tip of a 1/0 red long shank. Whiting live in all different areas so rod specs are up to you.

Soft Plastics:

There isn’t a great deal of soft plastics on the market in Australia for whiting yet. If you do use hard bodies or soft plastics use a light graphite spin combo. A local tackle shop not too far from my town of origin sells great little 2 inch curl tails and paddle tails. Other than that you could try a gulp 2 inch baby shrimp or a small storm wild eye twitchy.

Hard bodies:

The same thing applies to hard bodies as soft plastics, whiting will only attack small lures and there aren’t too many good lures for whiting out there in the tackle stores of lures. Surface lures work best on whiting. A Sebile 52 splasher works great as does a 72 stick shad FL. Retrieve styles and lure reviews will be online soon for these lures and others. Stay tunes for more kayaking adventures.