How to Use Burley for Saltwater Fishing: Get the Trail to the Fish
I started experimenting with deep burley because I could see a problem with throwing everything over the stern. In a decent current, the food was heading away while the fish I wanted were holding down near the reef. They might eventually meet, but somewhere well behind the boat. Lowering the delivery point gave me much more control over where the action started.
You can do plenty with a surface pot and a few chopped pilchards. The useful question is where the trail is going, and whether your bait or lure is travelling through it. Start there before emptying another bag into the water.
Choose a mix that suits the job
For the kingfish and mixed reef sessions described here, pilchards have been the main ingredient. Chopped pieces give you something to watch as they sink, and something a bait or lure can resemble. A little bread mixed with fish is useful when gathering yellowtail and slimy mackerel. Keep the pieces small enough to produce a trail rather than an occasional meal falling out of the pot.
Prepare a small working supply and keep the rest cold. Feed a little, watch what happens, then feed again. A busy patch of little fish is useful information, but it does not mean every handful needs to become a bucketful.
By 2023 I had changed from the metal mesh can to a plastic one. The old metal can corroded and marked the boat. I put the plastic can inside a bucket before chopping the pilchards into it, which made preparation and the eventual mess much easier to manage.
Use bait sold for fishing. NSW's aquatic biosecurity advice says to keep self-caught bait in the waterbody it came from and to keep seafood intended for human consumption out of your bait supply. Take unwanted bait and seafood waste home for disposal.
Watch the water before settling the boat
Drop a few small pieces beside the boat and follow them with your eyes. Which way do they travel? Do they sink beneath the stern or race away across the top? Now watch the boat. At anchor it can swing across the current; on a drift, wind can push the hull across the water carrying your burley.
Choose a position that lets the trail pass through the depth and ground you want to fish. If you are holding upstream of a reef edge, leave space for the pieces and your presentation to sink before they reach it. Keep the anchor and chain out of seagrass and allow safe clearance from reef, other boats and the shore. Set up the stern so the pot, downrigger line and fishing lines have separate working space.
When drifting, watch the actual track rather than assuming the wind arrow tells the whole story. If the boat keeps leaving the food behind, make a shorter drift and reset. More burley will not straighten the drift.
Keep a surface trail modest and continuous
A surface pot or small handfuls of chopped bait make sense when the fish are shallow, or when the current gives the food time to reach them. Establish the trail before running every rod out. Then maintain it while you fish: small amounts, regularly.
That was a key part of my FAD Hopping method in March 2022. I moved up-current or upwind of the FAD according to what was controlling the drift, kept the burley going, and cast a small jig well down the trail. The jig sank before I lifted and bounced it back. Mahi competing for the next piece of food were quite happy to grab the jig too.
Give other boats room to work their own drifts, and keep your lines clear of the device and its mooring. The Sydney mahi guide covers the full session, including checking whether a FAD is deployed. The important burley lesson is simple: keep the presentation with the food as both move away from the boat.
Put the delivery point deeper when the trail misses the fish
In July 2021 I tried a weighted mesh can on the downrigger. In that arrangement, the weighted can replaced the usual downrigger weight. A release clip and dropback allowed a live bait to sit behind it. My original sketch in Triggering the Bite shows the idea.
The sketch puts the can on the bottom to show the relationship. In the accompanying trial I lifted it clear after finding bottom. For fishing, leave clearance under the can and keep watching the depth as the boat moves. Dragging a cage through reef is a very efficient way to finish the experiment.
At the Centurion I could see the can on the sounder with baitfish around it. Later that day at The Peak, I set the can at 60 metres and caught kingfish during an otherwise quiet session. I also attracted a mako. My suggestion that this could be a useful snapper method was a suggestion at that stage; the demonstrated result in that report was kingfish.
The photographs show my trial equipment. Check the loaded cage, connections and mounting arrangement against the equipment maker's guidance before using a suspended container. Our current manual downrigger is described separately from the older electric setup pictured here. A cage is an extra load and a different shape in the water, so the weight supplied with a downrigger does not establish a safe cage capacity.
Use the counter and sounder together. The counter measures line paid out; current can push the can away and leave it shallower than that reading. Lower under control, keep the line away from the propeller and have a clear plan for retrieving it when a fish hooks up. Never try to free a snagged downrigger line by hauling it with your bare hands.
Match the bait to the depth of the trail
My September 2021 Long Reef session is a useful example. In about 15 metres of water I set the can at 10 metres, directly below the stern. Then I set a live bait about 10 metres below a balloon and let it drift back into the trail. Strikes came thick and fast. The full account is If You Chum, They Will Come.
Watch for the bait and the fish, rather than treating the can's depth as a setting to copy everywhere. If fish gather above it, raise the presentation. If they are deeper, let a bait or jig reach them while keeping the cage safely clear of the bottom. The sounder guide helps make sense of the screen; a return alone does not identify the species.
A lightly weighted cut bait can sink back with the fragments. A live bait needs enough room to swim without crossing the cage line or the other baits. Put one presentation out first and check its path before adding another. Our yellowtail and slimy-mackerel guide covers collecting and keeping those baits in good condition.
I tried a fly through that Long Reef trail as well. The trevally kept getting to it before the kingfish. They were not reading my plan, but they were certainly finding the food.
Change what you fish through the trail
In October 2022 I tried a different arrangement at the Centurion: a mesh bag with bread and cut pilchards, lowered a few metres off the bottom. The photograph shows the normal downrigger ball retained beside the bag, unlike the weighted-can experiment above. Both experiments put the burley deeper, using different hardware.
I was after flathead. A 10 g jig kept catching large slimy mackerel, so I changed to a 40 g jig to get the presentation down where I wanted it. A lightly weighted half pilchard worked too. Read Jiggin' the Burley Trail for that session.
Cast down the trail, let the jig sink to the useful depth, then lift and pause it back through the food. In that flathead session I used two sharp lifts and a pause. In the November 2023 First Kingfish outing, a faster mechanical action worked better on the small kings. Match the action to the fish you are seeing and the bites you are getting.
Fix the path before increasing the feed
- The fragments race away above the fish: move the delivery point deeper or reposition upstream so the food reaches the useful water.
- Fish show on the sounder but the bait passes over them: adjust the bait's depth or add only enough weight to reach them. Keep checking how it sinks.
- The lure hangs well behind the boat on a tight line: shorten the cast, change weight or reset the drift so it can sink again.
- Small fish intercept everything: change the presentation or depth. My move from 10 g to 40 g was more useful than feeding the slimies harder.
- Lines keep crossing: retrieve and reset them one at a time. Separate the cage line, drifting bait and casting lane before restarting.
- The spot stays quiet: check that you are still over useful ground. Be prepared to move rather than feeding an empty patch indefinitely.
Make the finish easy too
Bring the can straight into its bucket when retrieving it. That was one of my most useful changes in 2023. Keep the bucket stable and the lid secured for the trip home, then clean the equipment and freeze usable leftover bait promptly in a dedicated, sealed bait container. Remove scraps from the deck and rinse the can, bucket and working area before they dry on.
Check the NSW reserve boundaries and rules for the water you choose. At North Harbour and Long Reef, protected invertebrates and marine plants must stay where they are; bring your bait rather than collecting from the shore. Keep anchors out of seagrass, observe the applicable fishing restrictions and check the current NSW bag and size limits. Have the net and release tools ready before the fish arrive.
A good trail gives you a place to put the next bait or cast. Keep it steady, watch the depth and change the presentation when the fish tell you to. For more practical fishing methods, return to Fishing Guides.