Wildside - Kahawai

Humble kahawai: great sport and good eating

© Zane Mirfin, Wildside Column, Humble kahawai: great sport and good eating, Nelson Mail, 22 May 2010

Sometimes a booby prize is worth having.


Neighbourhood watch: Shane Schaab with kahawai caught on the Waimea Estuary.

THE day was just too good to waste at my home office. The Nelson sun beamed down and the day was calm and still, so it was an easy decision to go fishing at short notice. Giving my new next-door neighbour Shane a call got a positive answer, and we were gone – gone fishing.

The estuary water was clear and close to low tide when we placed the beach seine net from my dinghy, using oars. Running the remaining warp rope to shore, we jumped out of the boat, and grabbing a rope at each end of the net, hauled the seine towards our shore.

The theory was that flounder would lie in the deep holes at the junction of the estuary and the sea, but alas it was not to be. After four exhausting hauls of the seine, we didn’t have a single flounder to show for our efforts.

The stingray fishing, though, was epic, with big rays thudding into the net and splashing water furiously in their attempt to escape. The big rays made hauling the net hard work, but one haul was especially tough on the arms when we dragged up an old truck tyre in the net as well as heaps of rays.

Releasing all the rays unharmed, while avoiding whipping tails and big spikes, we were fortunate to at least catch a few
kahawai to take home.

Although it felt like winning the booby prize, the humble kahawai has saved my bacon many times on trips such as this.

The kahawai (Arripis trutta) has been important for Maori and Europeans ever since human habitation of New Zealand and kahawai can be a stunningly beautiful fish fresh from the water, with silvery sides dappled with black spots. On the back they can even glow almost iridescent blue, green, or purple. They are renowned for their hard-fighting ways once hooked on a line and grow up to about 5 kilograms, although average fish are mostly 1-2kg.

The kahawai is present throughout New Zealand and Australia (where it is called Australian salmon). A mainly northern species, kahawai are present down the West Coast and as far south as Banks Peninsula during summer. Being a streamlined inshore pelagic species, they roam the coastlines in small and large schools, eating mainly small baitfish, which they herd to the surface, often creating impressive boil-ups.

Kahawai are found anywhere from the open blue ocean through to estuaries and rivermouths, especially areas where there are strong currents. Such a wide geographic distribution and varied habitat preferences make them a very accessible and valuable species for recreational anglers.

From an eating point of view, kahawai probably aren’t as popular as other coastal fish such as snapper, tarakihi, flounder
and gurnard, but prepared well, kahawai are a fine table fish in their own right. They can be baked, fried, grilled, made into fish pies, fish cakes, and fish soup, but my favourite way to eat kahawai is brined in a brown sugar, salt, and soy sauce mixture, then smoked with a portable hot smoker.

Kahawai have a high oil content and high omega-3 levels and are also well suited to eating raw as sashimi. Killed immediately, bled, beheaded and gutted, then put on ice, there is nothing better than eating wafer thin slices of raw kahawai dipped in soy sauce and wasabi while out on the water.

From a fishing point of view kahawai are an exciting sport fish. Very few fish in the sea are as aggressive, and because of their small fish diet they are easy to coax into hitting a lure or fly.

Over the years we’ve caught kahawai by spin fishing off the rocks, trolling lures in open ocean, fishing for king salmon in Canterbury rivermouths, bait and fly fishing in berley trails in Tasman Bay, and on surface poppers fished with soft bait rods and braided lines. They can be caught surfcasting off beaches, from local wharves by children fishing for sprats, or on snapper setlines. We’ve even caught them wade fishing with drag nets on local beaches, set nets in tidal channels, or beach seining in estuarine waters. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that kahawai can be caught virtually any way, any place, any time in saltwater.

Kahawai can be easy to catch but there are always a few tricks that work better than others. Most anglers use lures that are too big when the target food of kahawai is often small whitebaitsized fish.

I always carry a few slim trout flies that imitate small bait fish in my fishing kit, such as matuka-style flies or clouser
minnows, and regularly use them. Tie a small swivel on your line above your lure and slide the trout fly down on to the swivel, and use your lure or jig head for casting weight.

Small hooks catch more fish, especially when fishing to schools of smaller fish, and are less likely to rip out of soft lips.

A landing net is always handy to avoid losing fish ripping out the hooks when close to the boat and another thought is to not set your reel drag too tight, especially when fishing hi-tech non-stretch braided lines.

When fishing to surface feeders, the best idea is to troll along the fringes of the school so as to not spook the fish into the depths.

Many times I’ve seen braindead anglers drive right through the middle of a surface feeding school, ruining the fishing for
everyone. If this happens to you, change to silver jigs or softbaits to plumb the depths and drift fish the general area and you will often pick up the fish again.

The best tactic and most exciting too, is to position yourself up-current of boiling fish, casting and drifting on to the approaching school.

Unfortunately, not all is well in the kahawai fishery and commercial overfishing has hammered once plentiful fish stocks.

Of most concern are the overseas fishing boats depleting vast schools of fish with purse seines, assisted by spotter planes, scooping up kahawai, and shipping them across the Tasman to be used as low value fishmeal and crayfish bait.

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