Are estuary cod good eating?

When fishing for jew, fingermark, and barra, a common by-catch is the gold spot or estuary cod.

These common species inhabit creeks, rivers, inshore, and semi-offshore waters.

Living on the bottom, they are commonly caught in live baiting and jigging lures.

For years they were frowned upon, as people wanted to catch more prized fish like coral trout and fingermark.

But in reality, estuary cod are good eating, a good fighter, and quite pretty in their own way.

Fact: Estuary cod are good eating.

In the estuarine reaches of Northern Australia, there are two cod species commonly caught.

Black spot or greasy cod and the better-eating gold spot.

Both move to deeper waters as they leave their juvenile phase.

Black spots move to the Barrier Reef as adults and can suffer from ciguatera so eating larger varieties is not advisable.

Even the gold spot or estuary cod loses its flavour and texture in larger fish.

So they are best eaten under 6-7 kg.

The obvious difference of course is the colour of the spots on the body of the fish.

Live bait or Lures?

Estuary cod are aggressive; hence, they will take a variety of live bait and lures.

In this video, we put the two techniques to the test.

Using mullets as livies and either our Pillager or Levitator lures – we conduct a livies vs. lures challenge!

This is Part 2 of our Livies vs. Lures challenge, and you can watch Part 1 – Livies vs Lures for Black Jews > here.