Flounder is always on the menu at this time of year. Brother-in-law, Powerful Al usually manages the drag net operation along the beach with any other able bodied person tagging along. Although the net requires two people to drag it, crabs invariably scuttle in and it's all hands on deck to untangle them. The large ones end up as bisque or some crab flavoured dip ( thanks to painstaking work by Al) while the smaller ones are delivered back to the sea. A drag might net a couple of flounder, or even three, and sometimes there are just a few stray herring. After being gutted and scraped, flounder are cooked whole on the barbecue and served up with a wedge of lemon – a very delicate, sweet flavour; yummo.
Mother and son fishing with whitebait net at waikanae, New Zealand.
Ruth Pretty Whitebait Recipe | Murray Lloyd Photography
Elusive as they are, whitebait always attract controversy. If it isn't about how many whitebait make a good fritter, it's a river-side turf war on the West Coast or environmentalists holding whitebait up as the poster children for polluted rivers. While West Coasters boast of one and three hundred kilo catches, this season half a cup is a good result from a few hours at the Waikanae River.
However the half cup could go toward this recipe from Ruth Pretty, and if you miss out completely there is the mock whitebait recipe in old versions of the Edmonds Cookery Book.
West Coast Whitebait with zucchini ribbons