Ray

The thornback ray earns its keep slowly. It glides flat over clean sand, takes its time finding your bait, and then turns out to be one of the better things you can pull off this coast. The wings are the reason people come back to it, and a little brown butter does the rest.

How to spot it

You won't mistake a thornback for much else. The body is a flat diamond that tapers into a long, thin tail, the back a warm brown freckled with white, black and pale dots over clean white underneath. The tell is the tail: a run of small, hooked spines down its length, paired with a barred pattern along the same stretch. That's where the name comes from. At 30-40cm across it sits comfortably across two hands, and the thorny back is what separates it from the smoother rays that share the same ground.

Where it lives

Thornbacks are bottom fish through and through, settling flat onto soft mud and sand and waiting for the tide to bring food past. They don't sit still for long, drifting in and out as the water moves over their feeding ground. Around Cornwall the sandy and muddy seabeds near Polzeath, Rock and the Penzance area are all worth a go. They come properly inshore through the summer, which is when a shore angler stands the best chance of one settling within range.

Catching it

This is patient ground-fishing, not quick sport, and that suits the fish. Pin a weighted hook hard on the bottom over clean sand or mud, hold the bait still, and let the ray track it down on the tide. Bait does the heavy lifting here. Fresh, oily offerings make the difference between a flat session and a bent rod, so go for prawn, squid, sandeel, mackerel or crab and keep them fresh. Fish open sandy ground from shore marks and time it for the warmer months when the fish push in. On handling: thornback ray stocks have come under real pressure, and the species sits on watch-lists for a reason, so take only the odd one for the table and slip the rest back. Keep your hands well clear of that spiny tail when you do, and get them back in the water quickly.

In the kitchen

Past the spiky looks, this is properly good eating, and it's easier to deal with than most people expect. The wings are what you want. Skinning a ray wing is a two-minute job once you've done it once: lay it flat, work a sharp filleting knife in at the thick edge, and run it along just above the cartilage to peel the skin and the thin layer beneath away in one sheet, then turn it and repeat. The flesh comes off the cartilage afterwards in clean, ribbon-like strands. Brown some butter until it smells nutty, throw in a spoonful of capers, and spoon it over a pan-fried wing with chopped parsley and a squeeze of lemon. The capers and burnt butter are the whole point: sharp and rich against meat that carries a faint shellfish note. It's the dish that turns a ray sceptic at the first forkful.