Here are two nice pictures.
Steve Starling showing the Tailor He just caught:
Tailor Picture:
You can read mor about the tailor in our yesterday posts.
Steve ‘Starlo’ Starling gives more interesting information about the Tailor,
how to catch it, how to prepare it, and so much more.
Just go to :
http://australianfishinggame.com/australian-fishing-game/tailor-care-of-your-catch-starlo/
http://australianfishinggame.com/australian-fishing-game/the-cyclic-abundance-of-tailor-steve-starling/
http://australianfishinggame.com/australian-fishing-game/how-to-catch-tailor-by-steve-starling/
http://australianfishinggame.com/australian-fishing-game/starlo-changes-his-mind-about-eating-tailor/
http://australianfishinggame.com/australian-fishing-game/steve_starling/its-tailor-time-from-steve-starling/
Marc Sibille
As a born-again tailor eater, I can tell you that what you do with them
in the two or three minutes immediately after capture makes a big
difference to their culinary quality. Ideally, as they’re landed, cut
their throats, bend their heads back to snap the spine, bleed them out
thoroughly and then get them onto ice, or at least into a cool, shaded
spot. Try to fillet the catch within an hour or two of landing it,
chill the fillets in the fridge for a few hours and eat them within a
day — two at most. Otherwise, smoke them… or let them go! Sorry, but I
still can’t get my head around frozen tailor. Soap with bones would be
tastier, and soggy cardboard more visually appealing!
There’s a certain salty freshness about really fresh tailor, and I now
understand why some people love them as a ‘breakfast fish’. Caught at
first light and eaten two hours later, with the beach sand still on
your feet, they are pretty special, particularly when simply grilled,
dusted with salt and pepper and drizzled with lemon juice. In some
ways, it’s the morning equivalent of that midnight prawn and mayonnaise
sandwich when you get home from a long, late-night prawning session.
The fruits of a joyous labour.
Article From Steve ‘Starlo’ Starling at www.starlo.com.au
Marc Sibille
From year to year and decade to decade, tailor runs wax and wane. No
doubt fishing pressure, both commercial and recreational, impacts on
tailor numbers, as do a host of other natural and human influences,
from rainfall to pollution and siltation in our estuaries, where
juvenile choppers spend their early years.
Overseas evidence paints the tailor as a classic boom-and-bust species.
They’re caught in South Africa (where they’re called shad or elf), as
well as on the east coast of North America and parts of Europe (where
they’re known as bluefish). In all these places, there are good and bad
years for tailor, perhaps related to climate, ocean currents and the
relative spawning success of adult fish. There’s also a line of thought
that very big tailor tend to produce lots of extra big eggs and extra
big fry, with a higher-than-average opportunity for survival and a very
good chance of producing more maxi-tailor with a similarly high
reproductive capacity in following years. The bottom line of this
theory is that over-sized tailor are an extremely precious resource and
worthy of protection. That would seem to paint the tailor as a classic
candidate for a ‘slot size’ limit, even if only on precautionary
grounds. I couldn’t see too many serious anglers objecting to a slot
between, say, 30 and 50 centimetres, and maybe a reduction in daily bag
limits at the same time. But I also can’t see it happening any time
soon. For one thing, the pro’s would probably howl like stuck pigs, and
that always seems to carry plenty of weight with our fisheries
management authorities.
Article from Starlo at www.starlo.com.au
Marc Sibille.
There are all sorts of ways to catch a tailor. The traditional approach
is to cast and slowly retrieve whole pilchards or garfish on ganged
hooks, ideally using an Alvey sidecast reel and a long rod. This
technique is about as deadly as it gets when it comes to specifically
targeting tailor. But there are other methods that work pretty well,
too. Metal casting lures are highly effective at times, and so are
plastic and timber minnows, or even surface poppers. Saltwater flies
also work a treat on choppers. So, it must be said, do soft plastics.
Some anglers curse tailor for ripping up their rubbers, but others
don’t mind quite so much, especially when the fish are a decent size. A
one or two dollar tail seems a fair price to pay for tangling with a
kilo-plus chopper.
In addition to destroying soft plastics, tailor teeth are famous for
cutting lines — or fingers! Ganged hooks prevent most chop-offs, unless
a bigger greenback swallows the bait deeply and gets its dentures to
the leader. Then it’s usually all over, and very quickly. Smaller
lures, and especially flies, are much more problematic and, to be on
the safe side, it’s not a bad idea to rig a short length of wire ahead
of any such offering. As always, wire is a trade-off. Using it will
definitely cost you bites and limit your by-catch. Not using it may
cost you a trophy tailor. Keeping the trace as light and short as
possible certainly helps, and 15 cm of fine, multi-strand wire is
usually plenty of insurance when dealing with tailor, even big
greenbacks. All the same, don’t expect to catch too many bream when
you’re rigged that way.
Article from Steve ‘Starlo’ Starling from www.starlo.com.au
Marc Sibille
Some folks love eating tailor. I must admit to having always had my
serious doubts in that regard, but recently I’ve swallowed my pride,
and a fair swag of tailor fillets, and I’m starting (slowly) to see the
attraction.
If its fresh and well cared for, tailor is actually not too
bad at all on a plate.
Frozen and mushy, I’d still rather eat the worst
of supermarket sausages, sawdust and all.
Tailor, exciting fish to catch.
But I have no argument
whatsoever with those who claim tailor are an exciting fish to catch.
They strike hard, fight energetically and erratically, jump from time
to time and look great in their newly-pressed silver and gunmetal-blue
winter uniforms. They’re just neat fish.
Article from Steve Starling ‘Starlo’ from www.starlo.com.au
Marc Sibille
Winter and early spring are tailor time, at least along our eastern and
western seaboards. In a part of the year when so many other pelagics
withdraw north to warmer waters, tailor (and, further south, salmon)
keep anglers satisfied in the fast-moving surface fish department.
Tailor runs tend to peak earliest in the south, then sweep northward,
culminating off Queensland’s south east coast, especially up along the
Noosa north shore and Fraser Island, in August and September.
Thankfully, the old freezer-filling mentality that saw
shoulder-to-shoulder, gang-hook-wielding kill fests up that way in
years gone by is slowly dying out, along with its aging exponents.
Closed seasons have helped. I often wonder how many of those
deep-frozen cadavers dragged back from traditional Fraser Island long
weekends ever ended up actually being eaten, anyway. I suspect many
were ultimately dumped, used as crab bait, or fed to the neighbourhood
moggies. That’s rather a waste for such a marvelous sport fish.
Report From Steve ‘Starlo’ Starling from www.starlo.com.au
Marc Sibille