Out our side though it is common to see kahawai like that in February. From April on though it is rare to see a milky one. I don't think I've ever seen a milky looking gurnard from off the coast but over summer in the harbour they are very common. Never in winter. Ten or more years ago I won the kahawai section of the CSFC One Base with a 3.1kg kahawai. It was around 73cm long and as skinny as. I used it for bait and the flesh was soft white and mushy. It was after that I started noticing the condition of fish and yepp the skinny ones always had white mushy flesh. We've had big kahawai workups in the Manukau lately. The fish are just smashing the whitebait and anchovies as the feed up to put on condition after spawning which I believe is in January and February out here

Trevally are one of my favourites to catch but have never seen one with milky flesh, yet they seem to be showing up out east.

I've always felt that it is a post spawning condition, but I believe gurnard spawn at least twice a year. I catch them in spring and again in winter full of roe. The winter fish in the harbour appear to recover way better than when they spawn in spring. The water temp in the harbour gets up to 27 degrees in the shallows on a hot day so I'm sure that is part of the equation.

IMO it's all to do with suitable conditions and food source available post spawning but then I'm not a rocket doctor . 

I'd like to hear Craig Worthington's thoughts on the subject.

Do you know when trevally spawn?  I got 4 trevally on 1 day in spring last year, 3 of which were thin and had white flesh.

I remember having the odd white-fleshed snapper among our bin of fish from the post-Christmas Tamaki Strait flats fishery dating back to the early 2000s. I think they have a more of a pale golden appearance on the outside, rather than a vibrant reddish with blue dots, and skinnier.

My elderly dad's from the Depression and WWII era where you eat everything, so the soft whities were eaten. I have to say that pan fried, they don't taste odd - obviously the softness and colour doesn't bode well, but when I snuck some white pieces into our panko meal a couple of months ago (because 2-3 of my 5 fish turned out to be white on filleting, and I'd already offered our friends some fish and felt I couldn't give them the white fillets) my family didn't notice!!

What I haven't seen before this season, that I recall, was the number of fish in spring which had soft reddish/purplish almost circular patches on the outside of the skin - which I think I read was a bacterial issue NIWA had identified. I initially wondered if it was a sign of tussling with other fish during spawning, but that was a mistaken guess.

I'll check fish condition more closely but no obvoius difference in the way they fight when hooked