G'day mate!

Thanks for your reply. 2.5 kg - 3.0 kg would be enough to last me a while, so I'm gonna try asking tackle stores as per your suggestion.

I've tried salted prawn head but without success. Salted pilchards have yielded result for me. I've also used chuck steak (for $3 from Woolworths) cut into small cubes for breams and caught a legal one. 

It seems to me breams and tailors respond to pilchards pretty quickly (if they're there), beef works too but it seems they're not responding to beef as quick as pilchards. Hookup rate with beef seems to be better though, since the little pickers can't pick the beef into pieces so the bait stays until a fish gulped it up.

Forgot to mention I salted my pilchards the exact same way you showed how to salt prawns (learnt from your post - thanks :-) 

Sorry for my slow reply...I got side tracked :)

Yes, salting pillies is much the same. Just a couple of things to note.

The pillies are thicker than prawns and much firmer flesh, so need more salt. I usually cover the pillies completely...as in fully covered so that about 1 or 2 cm of salt is over them.

Side note...I seem to remember saying this before...25kg bag of "pool salt" at Bunnings is about $8. It is still sea salt just not certified as "food grade"...

The other thing about salting pillies (or any fish) is the guts...Like all animals, the gut are water tight. This means that mirobs will survive in the gut even after salting. Yes, the gut will be dehydrated quite a bit from salting, but there will remain enough moisture for bacteria to take hold.

So the whole pillies from a slab after salting will last 3 or 4 months if kept cool. But, if you take the time to remove the gut, they will last much, much longer.

I really must do that salting pillies topic I promised...But then again, I am pretty lazy 😊

Thanks again itsaboat!

It's interesting you mentioned the gut and microbs. The other day I pulled out the guts from a salted pillie and put that on the hook and got a bream with that. Now that you've mentioned microbs ... just wondering if it was ok to eat the bream 😊 ? I ate it 😊

Good question. Yes, it is OK to eat.

If the bait and microbs are swallowed by the bream, it will take several hours to be digested and have any affect.