Geoff Thomas: Our bait fish are UK's best

Smoked and fresh mackerel fillets are popular in England and Amsterdam. Photo / Geoff Thomas

The first thing that catches the eye in the fishmonger's department at Harrods in London is a great pile of ice. It is the centrepiece of an artfully arranged display, with shop attendants attired in boater hats, bow ties and striped shirts ready to meet your every wish.

The only problem we could ascertain was the fish on sale. In pride of place on top of the ice mountain was a nicely laid out pile of - wait for it - pilchards.

Yes, pillies. They eat what we use for bait. But these specimens were not actually in good shape for bait. You could see the blood and ribs showing through the flanks, which means they had been frozen and thawed possibly more than once. Definitely past their use-by date. The price? About £12/kg, which equates to about $23/kg, although we don't subscribe to the practice of always converting currency to our own, as people in London earn pounds and a comparison is really meaningless.

But it does give an indication of how such fish are valued in another society.

And pilchards, which are called sardines in the Northern Hemisphere, are valued highly. They have to be when there is not much else to catch. Like mackerel and herrings, they are a traditional food throughout much of the world. These small pelagic fish which shoal in countless numbers constitute 30 per cent of the world's total commercial fish catch, at 27.3 million tonnes a year.

Pilchards can occasionally be seen on the menu at some of the top restaurants in Auckland, where they are called sardines. And you see them in some of the fish shops downtown, so they are sold as more than bait in this country.

The fish department in Harrods had some other goodies like skate wings, which are just like the wings off small stingrays, and we have heard stories of some people stamping chunks from ray wings and using them as substitute scallops.

But skate is a traditional dish in England. Then there were assorted pallid-looking fillets of some white fish, probably haddock as the traditional cod is almost impossible to find.

Over in Amsterdam, the most popular snack food is soused herring and there are little stalls everywhere offering herrings, just as we expect hot dogs or chips. The herrings are probably better for you but they are found everywhere along with smoked eels, which is another local delicacy. In fact, some of the eels come from our waters and are exported live.

Of course if you want to catch your own fresh fish, you can stop at a fishery like the one in a small village in the highlands of Scotland. It is called the Auchingarrich Fishery, and it costs £18 for a family to fish with two rods for 1 1/2 hours, and they are allowed to keep two fish.

These are trout, just like in a fish farm, and they are not much bigger than the sardines in Harrods. That is bait fishing, and you can buy worms or maggots to use for bait.

If you are into fly fishing, it costs £12 for two hours, keeping two fish, or £16 for four hours with three fish. You can also hire tackle at the local tackle shop and there are strict rules covering the fishing.

The first fish caught have to be kept until the bag limit is reached and then fish can be caught and released. If releasing fish, you must use barbless hooks and the fish may not be removed from the water, but additional fish can be caught and kept at a cost of £2 per pound.

The idea of barbless hooks and not removing fish from the water before releasing them is a good one, which we could take note of in our own sport fisheries. It avoids injury to the fish and ensures their survival or a better chance of survival.

After fishing, you are required to record all catches, even if unsuccessful, for restocking purposes.

Then, when driving along the low road on the shores of Loch Lomond and humming the famous song while looking for the high road, we notice a lovely old wooden boat about 4m long just idling along, with two blokes sitting back in the sun and two rods in holders bending under the weight of the lines trailing behind. Were they deep trolling, we wondered?

A line-up of Tasmanian devil lures and tobies in the tackle store in the nearby village confirmed they were trolling, just as we do on Lake Tarawera. But I bet the trout they catch are about the size of the ones which Fish and Game release into the lakes every year. Not the size at which we catch them a year later. And that isn't far away - opening day is October 1.

What was that classic Fred Dagg line? "We don't know how lucky we are."