The Eastern Red Scorpionfish is a nasty-looking little reef dweller with brilliant camouflage and a big set of venomous spines. Most anglers do not target them on purpose, but they turn up around rough ground and are a fish you definitely want to recognise before you grab one.
In Australia you will mainly find them along the east coast, especially around rocky reefs, headlands, harbour walls and broken bottom. They like shallow inshore country through to deeper reef edges, usually sitting hard against structure where they blend in with weed, rock and sponge.
They are ambush feeders that sit dead still and wait for small fish, prawns and crabs to wander too close. Rather than chase much, they rely on camouflage and a quick snap to nail a meal, with most feeding happening when bait is moving over the reef.
A bit of tidal flow helps because it pushes food past their lie, while dead slack water usually slows them right down. Low light around dawn, dusk or overcast weather can make them a bit more active and willing to move off the bottom. Light to moderate wind can help stir up the wash around rocks, but strong wind makes fishing the rough stuff harder and less precise. Small to moderate swell can fire up inshore reef life, though too much swell just makes it dangerous and difficult to hold a bait or lure in the strike zone.
If you are fishing reefy ground, use a simple paternoster or lightly weighted running sinker rig with tough baits like squid, pilchard strips or peeled prawn. Small soft plastics and slow-worked vibes can pick them up too, but the big tip is handling them carefully with pliers or a lip gripper and keeping well clear of the spines.
Even when one is bright red and sitting in the open, an Eastern Red Scorpionfish can still be ridiculously hard to spot until it moves.