Topic thumbnail

Using pufferfish as bait

Has anyone ever used pufferfish (blowfish) as bait? The reason I ask is because they're such an annoyance. They keep picking off other bait you'd use before any other fish come and take your bait. So I'm tempted to target them and use them as bait. Would love to hear if anyone here has tried it and whether it's a good bait or not.
Likes: 1 Login to reply 6 months ago
The short answer is no.

The only fish known to eat and target pufferfish are sharks (mainly tiger sharks). The little ones you are talking about would not be shark food. Sharks would be after the larger open water variety.

Sea snakes and turtles also eat them. But as bait themselves about the only thing you could target is tiger sharks. Nothing else eats puffer fish.

The little ones that are pesky and often take bait are usually only in very shallow water...What fish are you trying to catch?
Was trying to catch breams.
You could try small lures.

Bream will take a wide range of lures. From very small sabiki right through to largish hard bodied bibbed. They will even take flies if you are into fly fishing.

The lure you choose will depend a lot on the location. If it is a jetty a small jigging type lure. Or if it is shallow sandy a small soft plastic. etc

Wana try it never did. If I recall correctly I have the Collins Pocket Guide -Indo Pacific and Caribbean Reef Fish species which was given to me by my dad (deceased,) over 20 years ago. That the Maori (humphead) Wrasse feeds on them including porcupine fish and sea urchins. But there's not many of those wrasses around. Here's the guide I use to figure out baits to experiment for target species.


https://www.worldofbooks.com/en-au/products/coral-reef-fishes-of-the-indo-pacific-and-carribean-book-ewald-lieske-9780002199742?sku=GOR002871506&gad_source=1&gclid=Cj0KCQiAhbi8BhDIARIsAJLOluffALaW-0ogWiIihUjWi9C8uGpNx6-mimlAnOsdrsiYH04BzVIXlnsaAoJUEALw_wcB&gclsrc=aw.ds

When I was young here at the Jersey shore we used to catch a lot of blowfish while crabbing. We would filet them and cook them. Here the name we gave to them is chicken of the sea. Easy to clean and very tasty.

Also very dangerous.


No one really knows how many deaths there are world wide.

But in Japan it is the number one cause of food related death.


If you eat blowfish / pufferfish you will not know if you have been poisoned until you become sick. You then will go into a coma and death will be 4 to 6 weeks later.


The number of deaths might be low...But so to is the number of people that eat blowfish. Which make the percentage ratio quite high.


If you eat blowfish / pufferfish there is a good chance it will kill you.



Here in NJ we have the northern puffer which are not poisonous.