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Fish, Crustaceans & Cephalopods

Beche De Mer
(Sea Cucumber)

Baracouta are also known as 'couta and snoek (South Africa) and Sierra (South American waters)

The barracouta is frequently referred to as 'couta. It also has several other colloquial titles, including "pick-handle", "axe-handle" and "hammer-handle", all of which refer to its shape. In some areas its South African name of "snoek" or "snook" is also used.

An excellent sporting fish which will have a go at anything that sparkles and will jump clear of the water chasing lures which are trolled behind boats.

It is abundant in the southern hemisphere, ranging widely from southern Australia, both islands of New Zealand (where is is particularly plentiful) south of Cook Strait, South Africa, Argentina and Chile.

It is related to the great mackerel family and its allies.  It is an important commercial fish.  The Barracouta is a pelagic fish, travelling in schools and has been known to grow to a length of 1.5 metres, although an average size is around 1 metre and weighing 2.5kg.  It has an elongated, compressed body which is covered with minute, easily dislodged scales.

This slim, needle-toothed fish is usually dark, steely-blue or green along the top of the back and bright, metallic silver on the flanks and belly. There is a distinct black patch near the leading edge of the long, relatively high first dorsal fin. The forked tail is dark, often black. Barracouta are sometimes confused with the tropical barracuda. However, beyond vague similarities in body shape and teeth, the two have little in common and are unrelated.

Although often caught at lengths between 50 and 140 cm, barracouta are very lightly built. Even exceptional specimens in excess of 150 cm rarely weigh more than 4 or 5 kg. A more typical barracouta measures under a metre in length and weighs between 0.8 and 1.5 kg.

Barracouta eggs are small, transparent and pelagic.  Fry inhabit sheltered waters of bays and estuaries and grow very quickly, reaching 30cm by the end of the first year.

Although they are a pelagic fish, they can be found in schools at all depths down to forty fathoms.  They feed and travel very close to the coast.  They will feed on small baitfish such as anchovies and pilchards, jack mackerel and krill.  They are active, savage hunters and are driven on by a voracious appetite.

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See Also:  Snoek

Angling for Barracouta :

Barracouta are specifically fished for in southern states, but are generally regarded as a pest in New South Wales. They respond to a range of techniques, but are best caught by casting or trolling with lures such as a flashy, chromed spoons and silver or white jigs. The addition of a diving paravane to the rig ahead of the lure can often improve trolling results. Strips of fish flesh or whole pilchards and garfish on ganged hook rigs make excellent baits. Live baits attract plenty of interest, but many strikes are missed. A wire trace or ganged hooks are practically essential when fishing for barracouta.

Anglers in Tasmania, Victoria and South Australia have the right attitude to these fish. NSW anglers are just a little spoilt and get upset when barracouta grab baits meant for snapper, or lures meant for tailor or salmon. The fish is quite acceptable table fare, not brilliant but not too bad either. It fights reasonably well, at least as hard as a comparable tailor.

Barracouta take lures avidly even spectacularly at times when the 'couta are feeding at the surface. They even provide strikes on poppers if you like to get your jollies with visible takes. On top of the lure action the fish will take just about any bait and feeds anywhere from the surface to the bottom.

Barracouta often form very large schools and appear to 'invade' an area making it impossible to catch anything else. When this situation occurs, anglers often get frustrated and hurl abuse at the 'couta. The best thing to do in this situation is maximise the opportunities available and enjoy the fishing. The school behaviour of these fish can be quite irrational as they chase anything that moves. The fish will even leap at a lure suspended above the water.

Professional anglers often troll huge numbers of these fish by using a jig on a short length of line attached to a long pole. The barracouta concentrate in areas that hold plenty of bait fish particularly around shallow reefs, offshore islands, around headlands and in many of the deep bays along the southern coastline. While the fish do appear in huge numbers, more standard captures feature anything from five to twenty fish. The size of the fish varies from one to four kilograms with most schools containing fish of roughly the same size. The schools are most easily located by trolling the area first with either squid type lures or medium sized minnows. Once the fish are located, the trolling can continue if the fish are thick or the school can be worked with spinning lures, or bait.

Lure Choice:
Metal lures in the 30 to 60 gram range are ideal. The best style of lures are those with a strong action at medium speed.
Big Wonder Wobblers, Toby or Croc spoons are ideal. Bait anglers do well with cut strip baits or whole small fish.

Whole pilchards fished on gangs are deadly on these fish. When fishing with bait and lures it is important to use a small amount of light wire trace to avoid bite offs from either the hooked fish, or its ravenous mates. Often anglers simply float a pilchard or cast a lure while fishing for other species to add a few 'couta to the bag. The best tackle for catching barracouta is a double handed spinning rod about 2.2 metres long and a medium sized thread line fitted with 6 kg line. However, virtually any sort of tackle will do the job. The spinning rod allows the angler to holding box.

Be careful even handling dead fish, the teeth, gills and spines on the back can all do damage. Unfortunately the barracouta regularly take a fancy to bottom baits fished on heavy leads for snapper, morwong and other deepwater fish. Not only do they attack the bait, but at times they attack the sinker. With their savage dental equipment plus their school behaviour many bottom rigs can be lost in a fishing session. This does not endear them to some anglers. Despite all the negatives there would be a lot of empty fishboxes if not for the barracouta. There are many days in any anglers life when a few good 'couta would be better than a creel that is empty.
 

Cooking Barracouta:

Although generally despised in New South Wales, barracouta actually have tasty, pinkish-coloured flesh which is firm and white when cooked, and is also ideally suited to smoking. After cooking, the many long, flexible bones are easily removed. The flesh of barracouta can occasionally be infested with parasitic worms. Cooking destroys these worms and they appear to have no effect on the eating quality of the fish. However, barracouta should never be eaten raw.

Snook Cooking Tips:
The fish is easily prepared for the table by removing the fillets. This produces a clean, white fillet which has few bones and is easy to cook. The fish is quite reasonable when cooked and excellent smoked

It is sold fresh, smoked, canned and frozen. It can be cooked by frying, broiling, baking and it can also be microwaved. It is also made and eaten as fishcakes in regions such as Japan. It is prepared most often by grilling, frying or smoking. It is oily, extremely bony (although the bones are large and easily removed from the cooked fish) and has very fine scales which are almost undetectable, making it unnecessary to scale the fish while cleaning. Snoek has a very distinctive taste. Though very popular in regions like South Africa, it was not so popular to certain generations of British residents during the Second World War due to it being considered a food item of deprivation. Canned Snoek was imported in large quantities into Great Britain and government marketing of the product was not successful and may have had a negative effect. In South Africa, it is mostly caught and eaten in the southwestern coastal parts of the country. It is traditionally served grilled over coals with boiled sweet potatoes. This is a regional speciality.

Microwave Cooking Times for Fish
- Fish fillets – 5 minutes per 500g on medium-high, +50 seconds more for thicker fillets, or until flesh flakes
- Whole fish - Large – 6 minutes/750g on medium
- Whole fish – Small – 3-4 minutes on medium

Commercial Fishing for Barracouta:

The Couta Boat:
A couta boat is a type of boat sailed in Victoria, Australia, around Sorrento and Queenscliff and along Victoria's west coast as far west as Portland. It was originally used for fishing around the coast there from around 1870 until the 1930s, although it survived as a commercial fishing vessel until the 1950s.

The couta boat developed for the coastal fishing industry over the later part of 19th century. Fishermen chased such sought-after fish as barracouta (hence the name “couta boat”, scientific name "Thyrsites atun") but fishing co-operatives established quotas to control prices, and it was this that led to the added requirement of speed in a good fishing boat.

The boats would head out to the grounds before dawn, most often out through the entrance to Port Phillip, the infamous and often treacherous The Rip, which is where the couta boats’ qualities of seaworthiness were proven. Once their quota of barracouta was met, the fishermen turned their efforts to sailing back to port as fast as they could — the first boat back got the best prices.

So while load carrying capacity was important, the need for speed under sail was also a sought-after characteristic. The typical couta boat carried a gaff sail and jib set out on a long bowsprit, although the main sail developed into more of a gunter sail, as it had a very high peaked gaff or yard. In fact, a rig peculiar to the couta boat evolved, which allowed for sail to be carried a lot higher than was usual at the time, and included the distinctive curved down bowsprit.

As an efficient and competitive commercial fishing vessel, the couta boat reached its peak around the 1920s and 1930s. After the Second World War, the development of engines and the public’s growing preference for shark started to push the couta boat from centre stage.

The couta boat became a victim of the modernisation of the fishing industry after the Second World War, and only survives today due largely to the efforts of a small group of individuals with a keen sense of history and admiration for working maritime traditions. Regretting the apparent inevitability that these distinctive boats would be relegated to the status of a forgotten footnote to Australia’s seafaring history and vanish into obscurity, a few dedicated people sought out and restored, from the late 1970s onwards, the remaining original couta boats that were either still afloat or propped up in backyards along the coast.

But this working fishing craft’s perfect compromise between seaworthiness, speed and capacity has made it today a quintessential recreational sailing boat. Today, couta boats are sought-after and keenly compete in races. Many are built new from scratch, as the supply of originals has been exhausted. There is a couta boat club in Sorrento and one in Queenscliff.

Exporters, Importers & Processors, Wholesale & Agents of Barracouta (Thyrsites atun)  - Worldwide Trade Seafood Industry Directory of companies and contacts who are Exporters, Importers & Processors, Wholesale & Agents of Barracouta

DID YOU KNOW?
In the early part of the twentieth century, the fishing industry in Australia began to target additional species and use of new fishing methods. Until mid-century, sea mullet was the most common commercial fishery, followed by barracouta.

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