How to catch red cod

I like to eat fish once a week, and given my choice would select blue cod, sole, tarakihi, gurnard or sea perch.

Lately, however, these are hard species to find, and my usual seafood shops are offering fairly lean pickings: lots and lots of ‘Akaroa cod’, known elsewhere as red cod.

Priced today at just $1.99 per 100g, with red cod you get a lot of fish for your buck – but its loose texture means it can be a hard fish to cook. Consequently, guests will not drive miles for your red cod delicacy, although having said that, it tastes okay. It is also perceived as a weak fighting fish, and on charter boats is usually chucked back as the clients want other species. Even the name ‘Akaroa cod’ is probably a branding tool to hide the real identity of this humble fish species.

Sadly for us mainlanders, particularly in Canterbury, it is a common fish, and where North Islanders have snapper, our east coast inshore fishery is known for red cod. Ouch, that hurts, but over the decades is quite true. And it gets worse, as even the surf anglers targeting red cod have experienced sporadic fishing in recent years. The plentiful supply appearing in our shops is obviously being harvested further out to sea, and the fillets indicate big fish.

Out of interest I wondered what Fishing Forum contributors think of red cod, so asked. Here are some comments sourced off the internet.

Catching red cod is like watching paint dry.
Those slimy red things fight like a de-baited hook.
Red cod will eat anything. I’ve caught them stray-lining and on dropper rigs. At night/dawn, I find they tend to congregate in close.
If you bake or fry the fillets, the flesh just disintegrates. I think this is due to a high water content in the flesh. Mum pan-fried it once (the trunk of the fish with skin on) and it turned out quite nice, but I’ve never been successful repeating the feat.
They tend to throw up their stomach contents when caught – man, does it stink!
I wouldn’t even feed them to the cat.
I’d want a fishing rig that wouldn’t catch the damn things.
If we start catching those things we move somewhere else normally.
Yes they are edible… but they are awful to fillet as the flesh is so soft. Best option is to chill them right down – really, really cold in ice slurry – so you can fillet them. Then, once filleted, leave the fillets in a cold, very salty brine overnight in the fridge to make the fillets firmer.

Hmm: not very flattering, but amongst the negativity, some useful tips and species facts that are true. Handled badly, red cod are virtually inedible, and yes, they rank low as a fighting fish.

The red cod, however, is a great fish to target with kids. When they appear, they do so in big, voraciously hungry schools close to shore. Kids love that. Lots of hungry fish with suicidal eating habits and not very fussy about what they eat.

When I was a kid, my father took us to Timaru Harbour where, fishing off the wharf, we caught truckloads of red cod. It was fantastic fun, though I do remember many of the fish having worms. An added adventure was fighting the big barracouta that attacked several of the cod as we were winding them in. I once retrieved just a head.

Years later I targeted Canterbury red cod with my own children in Lyttelton Harbour, at Birdlings Flat and Taylors Mistake. It was either all on or all off. If the cod were there, all the rods were busy and every child caught fish. That’s all kids want, and like kahawai, the people’s fish, red cod were very welcome to parents hoping their kids just catch something.

Dusk suited children best, and at places like Birdlings Flat you could have a bonfire, cook food and watch the sun go down on a summer evening. Shags flew past in convoys returning to their roosts, and it was not uncommon to see hectors dolphins in the surf. Once there were even some basking sharks feeding just behind the breakers. Great memories.

Red cod are actually not that common globally. They are restricted to New Zealand and southern Australia, and as stated earlier, are particularly common in my backyard, the east coast of the South Island. They are most abundant in depths from 100 metres to 300 metres, but can appear in shallow water all the way out to 700 metres in depth. They like cool water and a sandy or muddy bottom, often appearing in harbours.

A red-brown in colour, their scales are soft, the skin rather slimy, and after being killed they deteriorate quickly if not gutted and chilled. The price I mentioned earlier for cod fillets show they are of moderate commercial importance.

A big head and small tail indicate they are eaters rather than scrappers. Indeed, they will eat virtually anything – usually an offering presented on a running or ledger rig – and are discarded alive by boat anglers or kept as bait. Many mainland surf anglers, on the other hand, take them home because of a lack of tastier options.

I have caught them in virtually every sea location I have fished, even down in Fiordland over rocky terrain. As a plus though, they can get quite large – up to 80 centimetres long.

As already mentioned, cod taste okay rather than great, and cooks have to use recipes that allow for the soft, flaking flesh.