Wildside- Sharks

Not-so-good, bad and ugly.

© Zane Mirfin, Wildside Column, Not-so-good, bad and ugly, Nelson Mail, 4 June 2011

When the snapper have gone, other fish species may be less attractive but worth attention.

Inedible: Sand sharks have coarse sandpaper-like skin; they turn up inshore as the water cools.	Spiky dog: Can grow up to a metre and weigh as much as 4kg.

Shark freezes well and is great fried up in a thick batter.

It’s official – last month was the warmest May on record. But along with the warmth came the rain, and then even more rain. A shallow Tasman Bay was pretty dirty and stirred up by incoming northerly winds and high river flows for much of the month, but eventually I saw a gap.

As chance would have it, a West Coast mate, Dave Heine of Dobson, was in town and the chance to go fishing together was just too good to miss.

We only had a few hours as we sped out into the bay in search of adventure. Normally, the snapper have long gone, heading out deep to hunker down in deep water for the winter, but because it had been so warm I figured there still might be the chance of a snapper in close.

We anchored up, dropped the berley container over the side, and waited for the fish to bite. It didn’t take long.

Catching Tasman Bay snapper in late May within a few hundred metres of the beach was a new experience for me, but it was too good to last. Eventually less desirable species turned up and food gathering was over, but the catching was great.

We caught dozens of fish – seven species in fact, including snapper, kahawai, spotties, sand shark, spiky dogs, barracouta, even an octopus.

Barracouta are the scourge of the sea. A long silver fish with large wolf-like fangs, the barracouta is a fish species that most sport anglers love to hate. Sometimes they are present in almost plague proportions and
they can make short work of monofilament line with their teeth.

On the plus side they put up a great fight on light rods and I’d much rather be catching fish than not.

Sometimes you’ll be winding up another fish species when a savage hit halfway up and half-afish left will signal the arrival of the barracouta. They’ll eat lures, jigs, bait, poppers – virtually anything, but you’d be a brave angler to eat them. Said to be full of parasitic worms they can be eaten smoked, although I’ve never tried. Early Maori caught ‘‘manga’’ on wooden surface lures and dried large numbers on
racks, to be stored as a winter
food.

Sand sharks are a horrible fish.

Inedible, with coarse sandpaperlike skin, they turn up inshore as the water cools down, often in large numbers. They are poor fighters and don’t have much to recommend them except that they are another fish species and they do bend the rod. The best way to get them off your hook is to grab them just behind the head and they will open their jaws so you can get your hook out without being bitten.

Shark species often get bad press because they’re not considered prime eating fish. But many local shark species such as rig (also called smoothhound, spotted dogfish, or lemonfish), elephant fish, or tope (also known as greyboy) offer excellent eating. Rig are most commonly caught with set nets although rig and elephant fish can be caught with crab and shellfish baits. Tope are a common catch, especially off the
West Coast beaches, and can grow quite large but they also make good eating.

All shark species require careful handling for eating – killed, cleaned, and chilled promptly to avoid the dreaded ammonia taste. Fins, tails, heads, and guts should be removed immediately and the trunk chilled and filleted back on shore.

Sharks have no bones, only cartilage, and the skin needs to be removed as well. Shark freezes well and is great fried up in a thick batter. Most fish served at your local fish and chip shop will be shark. However, of recent years shark is sometimes replaced by other cheaper fish species such as imported basa catfish raised in the polluted Mekong Delta.

Personally, I always prefer to consume fish I have caught myself so I know what I’m eating.  Dave Heine recommends minimising the ammonium taste of home-caught shark by dipping fillets in milk, then dipping in
flour, then milk, then flour, and then frying.

On our recent Tasman Bay trip, the fishing really went to the dogs when the spiky dog brigade turned up. Spiny dogfish, or spiky dogs as we call them, can grow as long as a metre and weigh as much as 4kg. They are poor fighters on the rod and I have to admit that I’ve never knowingly eaten one. Spiky dogs are safe to handle, but you need to be careful of the two sharp spikes forward of both dorsal fins on the upper body which can inflict a nasty jab for the unwary.

Some fishing publications rate spiky dogs as a good eating fish, being sold as snow fillets, but recommend that the flesh should always be frozen first to dry out and firm up. YouTube also has some impressive – and amusing – clips about filleting dogfish.

Sharks and other less desirable food fish may not be as glamorous as, for example, snapper, but they can still be fun to catch and worthwhile in your frying pan.

I’ve become more adventurous in what I’ll eat out of the sea, and shark species are definitely worth a go. Maybe you really can teach
an old dog new tricks.