Thread: Cow Rays

Just got back last week from my first trip to the pier. It was a blast. However, the Cow Ray's tore up everything we had until we had (we were foolishly fishing with bass rigs). My question is, are the rays always that bad?

No just certain times of the year.

Yeah, we usually just see a few in the course of a day.
I wonder if they were mating (or feeding) around the pier?
40 years ago we used to see manta rays like that around the old pier.

I asked the biologist about it last month. Said they don't breed until Fall and shouldn't be herding up like this. Shook his head and said all he could figure out was how warm the water is.

It is believed the real culprit with cownose (chesapeake) rays is the problem we have with shark finning. Large sharks feed on the cownose, but with their numbers quickly diminishing, creatures like the cownose keep multiplying unchecked. Plus, most fisherman won't keep them because it is thought that rays are protected--when these cownose are certainly not. Only certain rays are protected.

The cownose have become such a nuisance, that virginia made an article a couple years ago about encourging people to start eating them by offering recipes and making them into a game fish. They renamed it to chesapeake ray to make it more appealing for consumption. The reason is because the cownose comes in huge droves and wipes out entire oyster beds in a few hours... including artificial manmade ones that took millions of dollars to establish. In addition, they feast on young fry and all forms of crustacea, and simply wipe an area completey out.

Cownose does not prepare like southern ray or skates, which are more similar to scallops or thick calimari (as you'll hear some say). Instead, cownose very closely resembles venison (deer meat).

You can make jerky out of it and prepare it any way you would a deer. Texture and game taste is virtually the same.

You must soak the meat in whole milk for at least 24 hours, and then season it any way you like. It is not for everyone, as like with venison, it is an acquired taste. Since i dont get time to hunt anymore, i will keep a cownose from time to time if i get that venison urge in me, but it's not a preferred table fare compared to other fish.

Some scout airplanes making observations in the gulf have witnessed hundreds of square miles of visible cownose in the gulf and altantic migrating in massive schools at the waters surface. If people don't start eating them and making good recipes, these have the capability of ruining a lot of natural habitat being left unchecked.

I haven't done any research on them since last year, so i am assuming some more data is out there and they've only grown in numbers since. Hopefully shark finning will be put to a stop so there will be enough sharks to feed on them in the future. Here we see the true impact that mankind can have on natural populations--even in a giant ocean.

One good way to slay some of those cow rays would be by bowfishing at night from a boat .They sure do make for a good target especially when used to shooting something like gar or carp in fresh water.I have heard and seen a few boats doing this in some of the bays!

Back years ago,we filleted some stingrays at ate them.We were told that they taste just like scallops.WHAT i wanna know is there any truth to that and how would the cownose taste in comparison?HELL,IT WAS SO LONG AGO I DONT EVEN REMEMBER IF THEY WERE ANY GOOD!

ummmm. diminishing shark numbers??????? Have you been paying attention while fishing lately. in all my 25 years of fishing from the pier I have never seen as many sharks as there is now. dont know if you were there thursday but at 4pm a school of blacktips numbering well over 200 fish showed up at the octi and shut down fishing for at least 30 minutes before moving on.

[quote author=dublthret link=topic=1378.msg13212#msg13212 date=1339972268]
ummmm. diminishing shark numbers??????? Have you been paying attention while fishing lately. in all my 25 years of fishing from the pier I have never seen as many sharks as there is now. dont know if you were there thursday but at 4pm a school of blacktips numbering well over 200 fish showed up at the octi and shut down fishing for at least 30 minutes before moving on.
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We're talking larger sharks that eat cownose (large hammerheads for example), along with overall populations. Don't let the little schools scavaging at the pier mislead you. Shark finning is a real problem.

Cownose migrate. The species we have in-shore aren't likely to eat cownose, except perhaps bull and tiger sharks with the random hammerhead mixed in. Not to mention, i highly doubt there is a problem with shark finning in alabama's waters. Sharks are fine here.

We watched a large hammerhead chasing down a school of cownose rays last year from the 3rd cold mil. It was cool. We definitely don't have the numbers of hammerheads, tigers and bulls that we had years ago. Based on a lot of boat fishing near the coast, it does appear that the majority of Blacktips, Spinners, and Atlantic Sharpnose sharks love to hang out at the pier eating all the free kings.