any substitute for pilchards?

[kevin1987316]

i tried pilchards for tailor yesterday and do received a lot of bites, however, the cost is that i used lots of pilchards and spended much money.
i was thinking of making a hard body as similar as possible to pilchards but i cannot complete due to lack of expereince in making lures. so what else can be used as substitute for pilchards which can almost achieve the same fishing result?
can i add some sinkers on a blue hard body to make it something like a pilchard?
or does mullet fillets word on tailors? what about breams, are small breams ok for tailors?.....are thes are ideas but not confirmed yet

[Bream_Reaper01]

Have to be legal Bream of course,you could try gar possibly works well in northern N.S.W..Mullett fillets can be good at times too.

[Edmo]

there are so many ways of fishing for tailor spinning chrome lures such as raiders etc it all depends on your gear for 1 thing. if you want to use pillies buy the iqf (individually quick frozen) in 4 kilo packs to save heaps of money.
During the season you`ll find these are great as you dont have to defrost them all at once, keeping them fresher longer.
Chrome lures are cheaper than hard bodies and you can cast them further especially in the windy onshore days.
Pillies are the staple of many tailor fishos so buy in bulk and save.

[kevin1987316]

what is pilies please, i cannot find it in the dictionary. if possible, attach a picture and tell me where to buy it. thanks

[fishingbarry]

Have a look at "spinning for Tailor" on this page there is more info there then you could learn in years.
Cheers
Barry

[Edmo]

Sorry mate, pillies is justshort for pilchards.
You will also hear them called WA pilchards (western australia pilchards) blue pilchards, mullies and or sardines as they are known on the table.
Sometimes you can get them fresh off a trawler if you are near any, these might or might not save you money depending on the skipper, the only sure plus is you can actually eat these,cleaned and barbrqued are very tasty.

[kevin1987316]

thank u so much
by the way, i saw two guys using a very small fish (8-10cm long. but very very thin). the fish seems to be not that easy to break as pillies and the color is silver instead of blue. any ideas on this bait?

[kevin1987316]

and what is the common price of the pillies per kilo, please

[shabss]

edmo
see your pm

[Freeeedom]

thank u so much
by the way, i saw two guys using a very small fish (8-10cm long. but very very thin). the fish seems to be not that easy to break as pillies and the color is silver instead of blue. any ideas on this bait?

Could be garfish, although 10cm is a bit small for them. They are usually around the 20cm mark. Gar are a good tailor bait and last a lot longer on the ganged hooks than pilchards do. Here's a picture of some gar I caught in the North Pine Dam on Friday.
Other small fish that can be used for tailor bait are frogmouth pilchards ( or 'froggies') which are a smaller pilchard with a very big mouth and even large whitebait.
Cheers Freeeedom

[kevin1987316]

well, what about mullet fillets, do they work as well as pilchards?

[finding_time]

IMHO the best tailor bait there is is a nice fillet of tailor! The nice big green back tailor just cant go past it. The first chopper of the night gets filleted for this reason i'll take quality over quantiy any time.


Ian

I'm sure a nice FRESH mullet fillet would work wonders as well

[manchild]

Finding time you hit it on the head tailor is the best bait for tailor if fresh ,as for the small silvery fish i say they were hardiheads i often castnet a few from the beach even if its mean a cold mornin swim Works wonder on bream as well
cheers
George

[kevin1987316]

i caught a lot of undersized breams there, so i wonder if i can use the breams fillets or the whole of it as bait for tailor.
if so, how to use it to achieve the best result?

[young_mind]

thank u so much
by the way, i saw two guys using a very small fish (8-10cm long. but very very thin). the fish seems to be not that easy to break as pillies and the color is silver instead of blue. any ideas on this bait?

sound like white bait to me