Geoff Thomas: Piper's pull ever popular

To prepare them for the pan hold the piper upside down and press the thumb firmly on the stomach, running down from the head to the tail. Photo / Geoff Thomas

In other countries they are called garfish, but the slender fish with a beak for a lower jaw and flanks as silver as a newly-minted coin are a favourite in our waters. We call them piper and everything from sleek, green kingfish to snapper with crunching jaws love to eat them.

People who know how to catch piper and prepare them are also partial to the sweet taste of the delicate, clear flesh.

But they are not easy to catch. With such a tiny mouth, it requires a small hook and they can be fussy when it comes to baits. Their natural food is soft weed and tiny crustaceans and baits should be small. They will take a sliver of silver skin and flesh from the stomach of a pilchard, but will ignore dark meat. A ball of dough moulded on to the hook also works, but one of the best baits is live maggots. They are tough and stay on the hook, and their wriggling is an added attraction. Movement helps attract piper and baits can be cast out and moved slowly through the water by raising and lowering the rig tip. A very light line and a pencil or quill float helps, with the hook suspended about 50cm below. Berley on the surface will attract piper to the back of a boat or around a wharf.

The other way to put piper in the fish bin is to run a bait net around a school of them in the shallows. Piper can usually be spotted splashing on the surface and, if one person walks out from the beach with one end of the net to surround the fish, they can be dragged on to the sand or mud. One trick is to use a long rope to drag the net out, and flick the rope up and down on the surface. This will help drive the piper into the net.

Cleaning the catch is easy. Simply hold the piper upside down and press the thumb firmly on the stomach, running down from the head to the tail. This will clear out the contents of the stomach, and your fish is ready for the pan.

Piper can be fiddly to eat because of their small bones but this can be solved by pressing a rolling pin firmly along each side before cooking or bending the fish into a circle and pushing the beak through a slit in the wrist of the tail to secure it. Grilling or pan frying in oil and butter works well, as does rolling them in crumbs first (rice crumbs add a nice crispness). When cooked, the bones easily come away from the flesh.

Piper are chased by marlin, kingfish and kahawai and any wounded fish that sink are quickly snapped up by snapper. Smart fishermen know this and, when targeting large snapper or kingfish, they spend time filling the bait tank with live piper before heading out. They can be fished live with a small live-bait hook inserted through the skin in front of the tail and anchored on the bottom with a sinker above a metre of trace. This is a standard kingfish rig in shallow water close to a reef but usually snapper take the bait before the kings turn up. A good supply of baits is needed for this fishing.

Dead piper can also be fished by running a ball sinker above a hook inserted through the skull. Then the beak can be snapped off or poked through the hole in the sinker, and the bait cast out and retrieved. Kings like a moving bait and, when cast out and skipped across the surface, such baits can be deadly. If allowed to sink, any marauding snapper will find it attractive also.

They can also be cut into chunks and fished on regular snapper rigs, which work just fine when bottom fishing. Any kahawai around will also fall for this approach and the summer just ended saw big kahawai around the coast in such prolific numbers that many people regarded them as a nuisance.

We are indeed blessed if we can regard such a valued sporting and table fish as a nuisance. But the humble piper also has an important role; in the kitchen and the bait box.