Excited by Sam, Ryan and Joe’s recent captures of some fantastic metro tailor I decided to head down to Cottesloe Groyne last night for a bit of a scouting mission.

With an easterly blowing initially, the conditions weren’t exactly perfect for big tailor, however, the water looked pretty good.

Under a low cloud cover I started off throwing some metal lures around the reef area on the south side of the groyne. That gave me the chance to try out my new Xzoga spin rod and Abu Garcia Soron STX 60, both of which worked just how I had hoped. Unfortunately, the tailor weren’t behaving the same way and after not having one follow after nearly an hour of lure tossing and with the light fading I decided it was time to switch over to baits.

It didn’t take long for the action to start and my mulie baits were hit and picked to pieces by what appeared to be a reasonable school of herring. That was confirmed when a family fishing further along the groyne from me started landing a few plump little herring.
Keen to chase the tailor, I stuck to my full mulie baits and eventually a decent hit eventuated. Unfortunately, whatever it was, managed to free itself after a short run. There was a fair chance it may have been a small stingray as some kiwi chaps towards the end of the groyne had hooked one just prior to that and were soon to hook onto another.

However, it wasn’t too long before the telltale bang, bang, bang of a tailor bite told me things were starting to look up.

It wasn’t one of the big winter tailor I was chasing, legal sized but a bit thin, but it was good to know that there were tailor there. After a quick de-hooking the fish was back in the water and I threw another bait out.

Bang, bang, bang. It seemed like another tailor bite, but this time it turned out to be an angry, snapping snook. After evading its teeth, I managed to de-hook it and decided to keep it as a future bait.
This happened again two more times before eventually something a lot more substantial tried to pull some line back on my Stradic. It turned out to be a very nice tailor, again not as big as I had hoped, but still at 45 cm, a very nice fish.

After landing a few more snook and a smaller tailor and releasing them it was time to head home and have some beautiful fresh tailor for supper.

It was a great little evening session and I would suggest that any of you young guys keen to catch a tailor might find Cott Groyne worth a try. The action all started just on dark, so plan to hedad down an hour before the sun hits the water.

All the best, Colin Hay