A surfcasting trip in dream conditions targeting gurnard with plenty of action, along with a catch and cook featuring deep fried dogfish and a curry.

❄️ A Chilly Start

Being early May, the temperature is starting to drop and it was only 6 °C when I hit the beach around 9 am. It was also one of those clear Canterbury days with hardly a cloud in the sky. Even better, the sea was calm with the swell under 0.5 m and blue water visible.

The main target species for the day was gurnard, but I was still hopeful of a late season rig shark or elephant fish. So I started off with both banana prawn and salted pilchard baits to cover a range of species.

Soon after I had my first baits cast out, my fishing buddy Dave turned up. He brought along his Aeroo Pro drone and some big baits targeting larger sharks, mainly sevengills.

Morning sea conditions

🚁 Aeroo Pro Drone Bait Drops

One advantage of drone fishing is being able to send out large baits that would be difficult to cast effectively. For Dave's first drop with his Aeroo Pro, he sent out a big chunk of salmon along with a whole sardine targeting sharks. On his second rod, he sent out a gurnard rig with five fish baits on flasher rigs.

Dave's Aeroo Pro on its first flight

🚁 First Fish of the Morning

It wasn't long before I had my first fish on and I remained optimistic that it wasn't a dogfish. I really had no idea what it was while bringing it in since it felt a bit more lively than a dogfish, but definitely wasn't big.

It was a very welcome surprise to see a gurnard appear out of the surf. Being May, it's getting a bit late in the season for them in Canterbury as they usually disappear once the water starts to cool.

The gurnard went for a salted pilchard bait on a 4/0 circle hook flasher rig - one of my go-to rigs for targeting gurnard.

First fish of the morning - a nice gurnard

🦈 Dogfish Turn Up

After a short quiet spell, both Dave and I hooked up at the same time. I could see Dave was into something on his shark rig, although it didn't look especially big.

My fish was definitely bigger than the gurnard but wasn't putting up much of a fight at all. At first I thought it might be a carpet shark, but it turned out to be a dogfish instead. Suspecting the gurnard fishing might not be that great, I decided to keep the dogfish for either deep frying or a curry.

After dealing with my dogfish, I went over to see what Dave had caught since he seemed a bit excited. A dogfish had taken one of his shark baits and a larger shark had then taken a big bite out of it. Interestingly it went for the belly region and avoided the spines - perhaps this was intentional?

Dogfish with a large bite - probably from a sevengill

🦈 Plagues of Dogfish

My next fish was a carpet shark but beyond that, we were plagued by dogfish. On Dave's next drone drops, he was pulling in dogfish three or four at a time.

Many of them were obviously not going to survive, so I ended up taking another five dogfish as table fish. One of them was a very large female carrying three golf ball-sized eggs.

Dogfish taking 4 of 5 baits on a gurnard rig

Dave's patience didn't last much longer and he left just after midday. I stayed for another hour or so and landed about 10 more dogfish before my patience also ran out. It became pretty obvious that catching anything else was going to be very difficult. The dogfish were even smashing prawn baits, which will usually slow them down.

🍽️ Catch and Cook

Despite dogfish often being considered a nuisance bycatch, they are edible and are well suited to deep frying and curries.

Later that night I had deep fried dogfish and really enjoyed it. I always like to make a crispy batter but on this occasion I didn't have any soda water or beer on hand, so I improvised with baking soda and white vinegar. The reaction between the two creates bubbles which aerate the batter.

Deep fried dogfish - yum!

The next day I made a dogfish curry. Really simple - just brown off some curry paste in a pan, add coconut cream and bring to a simmer, then add diced dogfish. About 7 minutes at a simmer is all it needs. There is absolutely nothing wrong with dogfish in a curry and I really enjoyed it.

Dogfish curry

Despite the plagues of dogfish, this was still a worthwhile trip and I was stoked to catch a gurnard in May - the first time I have managed this.

📓 Field Notes

• Location: Canterbury
• Target species: Gurnard, rig, elephant fish
• Landed: Gurnard, spiny dogfish, carpet shark
• Conditions: Light NW winds, clear skies, 0.3m to 0.4m swell, clean to slightly discoloured water
• Tide: Outgoing for first two hours, then incoming for rest of the trip
• Best bait: Salted pilchard for gurnard
• My gear: Shimano Xitus Pro 13'6" rods (x2), Shimano Ultegra CI4+ 14000 XTC reel, Shimano Ultegra XSD 14000 reel

🎥 Watch the Full Video

The full mission is available on my YouTube channel.

👉 Watch it on YouTube

Got any feedback or questions? Feel free to drop a comment on any of my social media channels — I read them all.

— Dan