Blue Cod

How to identify blue cod

• A round, elongated body that is flattened underneath, built for resting on the bottom.
• A smoothly sloping, rounded head with a big mouth and thick, fleshy lips. The eyes are large.
• Adults are blue-grey to blue-green on the back and upper sides, fading to white on the belly. Smaller fish are paler and blotched brown.
• A short first dorsal fin of about five short spines, followed by a long soft dorsal fin that runs almost to the tail. The anal fin is long too.
• Pelvic fins set well forward on the throat, which the fish uses as props when it rests on the seabed.

Blue cod are stocky, round-bodied fish with a smoothly sloping head and snout, a big mouth with thick lips, and large eyes that can swivel to look almost all the way round. The belly is flat, and the pelvic fins sit far forward on the throat. They have no swim bladder, so they sink when they stop swimming, and they spend most of their time resting on the bottom, propped on those fins.

Colour changes with size and sex. Juveniles are pale with two long dark stripes along the sides, which fade to brown blotches as the fish grow. Once they pass about 25 cm, both sexes are bluish-grey on the back with a white belly. Females often have an orange tinge and tend to turn greener as they get bigger. Adult males are blue-grey with greenish sides and a golden-brown line above each eye. Males grow faster and bigger than females, so most of the biggest blue cod you see will be males.

Despite the name, blue cod are not related to true cods. They belong to the sandperch family, Pinguipedidae. Divers find them easy to approach, and curious fish will swim right up and nip at fingers.

Where it lives in New Zealand

Blue cod are found only in New Zealand, from the shore to the edge of the continental shelf, near rocky reef and broken ground down to about 150 m. They are far more common south of Cook Strait and around the Chatham Islands. The biggest commercial fisheries are off Southland and the Chathams, with smaller ones off Otago, Canterbury, the Marlborough Sounds and Whanganui.

They like bedrock outcrops on gravel or sand, especially where there is kelp, other seaweed or sponge. Juveniles shelter in sponge gardens and shallow reef, while adults are mostly found on reef edges and in deeper water.

Blue cod don't travel far. In a Foveaux Strait tagging study, 60% of recaptured fish had moved less than 1 km, though a few went as far as 156 km. Fiordland tagging found much the same. That makes local populations easy to fish down, which is why some sounds and harbours have their own rules or closures.

Blue cod spawn over a long season in late winter and spring. Eggs drift for about five days, and the larvae for about five more, before settling on the bottom.

How to catch it

Bottom fishing from a boat: almost all recreational blue cod are caught on rod and line from a boat. Find rocky reef, broken ground or the edge of a reef where it meets gravel or sand, and fish your bait right on the bottom. A two-hook ledger (dropper or paternoster) rig with enough sinker to hold bottom is the standard; see the fishing rigs guide. Blue cod are not fussy: squid, pilchard and fresh fish fillets all work, and cut baits stay on the hook better than soft ones (see the bait guide). If you aren't getting bites within a few minutes, move. Blue cod stay close to home, so a spot that has been fished hard can be empty while the next patch of reef is busy.

Use bigger hooks to protect undersized fish. Blue cod have no swim bladder, so unlike snapper they don't suffer from being brought up from depth. Research for the Ministry of Fisheries found that small fish caught on large (6/0) hooks, which seldom gut-hook them, survive well if they are put back quickly. Circle hooks help for the same reason. Lip-hooked fish can be released in a few seconds.

Potting and spearfishing: in many areas you can also take blue cod in a cod pot, but pots must meet mesh rules and are banned in some places, such as the Fiordland internal waters. Divers spear blue cod over shallow reef, where the fish often come in close.

Look after the catch. Bleed and ice your fish straight away (bleed and ice guide). Blue cod must stay whole or gutted until you are back on land (some areas also allow headed and gutted), so don't fillet them at sea. Then use the filleting guide.

Eating

Blue cod is one of New Zealand's most prized eating fish. The flesh is white, delicate and flaky, with a mild flavour and low oil content. Because it is so mild, simple cooking shows it off best: fillets pan-fried in butter, battered for fish and chips, or baked whole.

It also suits poaching, marinating, chowder and soup. Smoked blue cod is a southern favourite, though as a lean fish it dries out faster than oily fish like kahawai, so smoke it for a shorter time or brine it first (see the smoking guide).

The fillets are soft and break up easily, so handle them gently once filleted, and bleed and chill the fish as soon as it is caught.

Recipes

• Panfried blue cod on buttered leeks with crisp bacon (RNZ)
• Blue cod and seaweed ceviche (Cuisine)
• Creamy blue cod pie (New World)

Good to know

Blue cod is New Zealand's third most caught recreational fish, after snapper and kahawai, and the most caught in the South Island. Recreational fishers kept an estimated 316,746 blue cod (about 170 tonnes) in the year to September 2023, and 83% of them came from the three South Island areas. It is the most important recreational finfish in Marlborough, Canterbury, Otago, Southland and the Chatham Islands. Bones in middens show it was also an important fish for Māori before Europeans arrived.

Blue cod is managed under the Quota Management System. Commercial fishers now take most of their catch in cod pots rather than on hand lines. The fish has low productivity, and stocks under heavy fishing pressure decline quickly. In 2025, Fisheries New Zealand rated overfishing as very likely to be occurring off Otago, and recreational fishers report local depletion in parts of the east coast, Southland and the top of the South Island. The rules were overhauled in 2020, and they now differ a lot from area to area.

Blue cod can live to about 32 years. When they mature depends on where they live: at about 2 years and 10–19 cm in Northland, but 4–5 years and 26–28 cm in Southland. Some fish start life as females and later change into males, while others are male from the start. Chatham Islands blue cod may be genetically distinct from mainland fish.

Questions

What are the blue cod rules?

They depend on exactly where you fish. Minimum sizes, daily limits and seasonal closures differ between areas, and some harbours, sounds and mātaitai reserves have their own rules or are closed to blue cod. The table above shows the current rules for each area and when we last checked them against MPI. You can also use the rules checker.

What is the Māori name for blue cod?

Rāwaru is the most common Māori name for blue cod. Te Aka Māori Dictionary also records pākirikiri, taipua, kopukopu and pātutuki. Pākirikiri is used for the spotty as well, a different fish.

How big do blue cod get?

Most blue cod caught are 30–40 cm long and weigh 0.8–1.5 kg, and the biggest reach about 60 cm and 3 kg. Using Fisheries New Zealand length-to-weight formulas from southern surveys, a 35 cm fish weighs about 0.6–0.8 kg, a 40 cm fish about 1–1.2 kg, a 45 cm fish about 1.4–1.7 kg and a 50 cm fish about 2–2.4 kg. Males grow bigger than females.

How do you fillet blue cod?

Keep the fish whole or gutted until you are back on land, then fillet it like most round fish. Blue cod have a big head, so angle the first cut towards the head to save flesh, and handle the soft fillets gently. Our filleting guide has a section on blue cod.

How much is blue cod per kg?

Prices vary by shop, region and season, so check with your local fishmonger. Blue cod is sold fresh and is usually one of the dearer fish on the counter, partly because supply is small. The whole commercial catch was about 1,700 tonnes in 2022–23, much of it potted off Southland and the Chatham Islands.

What's the difference between blue cod and red cod?

They are different families. Blue cod are blue-grey to green, firm-fleshed reef fish with a short spiny dorsal fin. Red cod are reddish pink with a black spot at the base of the pectoral fin, no spiny dorsal fin and much softer flesh, and live mostly over sand and mud. The national recreational survey asks fishers to always check whether a cod was red or blue.