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Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
whitebait
noun
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
▪ The accent is again on fish, including seafood platters of king prawns, crab and whitebait.
▪ When I first moved into my dressing room at the Lyceum, it gave off a heady fragrance of drains and whitebait.
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Whitebait

Whitebait \White"bait`\, n. (Zo["o]l.)

  1. The young of several species of herrings, especially of the common herring, esteemed a great delicacy by epicures in England.

  2. A small translucent fish ( Salanx Chinensis) abundant at certain seasons on the coasts of China and Japan, and used in the same manner as the European whitebait.

Wiktionary
whitebait

n. The young of various species of fish, especially herrings, sprats or smelts, served deep fried as a starter or snack

WordNet
whitebait
  1. n. minnows or other small fresh- or salt-water fish (especially herring); usually cooked whole

  2. the edible young of especially herrings and sprats and smelts

Wikipedia
Whitebait (disambiguation)

Whitebait (disambiguation) may refer to:

  • Whitebait, the juvenile of various fish species worldwide
  • Whitebait Smelt, a species of smelt (Allosmerus elongatus) that lives off the west coast of North America
  • Operation Whitebait, a small WWII air attack on Berlin to deceive German fighters regarding the main Operation Hydra bombing of Peenemünde
Whitebait
This article is concerned with whitebait as the juvenile of various species of fish around the world; for other uses of the term see whitebait (disambiguation).

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Whitebait is the immature fry of fish, in this case sardines and anchovies fished on the Riviera

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Whitebait is a collective term for the immature fry of fish, typically between 25 and 50 millimetres long. Such young fish often travel together in schools along the coast, and move into estuaries and sometimes up rivers where they can be easily caught with fine meshed fishing nets. Whitebaiting is the activity of catching whitebait.

Whitebait are tender and edible, and can be regarded as a delicacy. The entire fish is eaten including head, fins, bones, and guts. Some species make better eating than others, and the particular species that are marketed as "whitebait" varies in different parts of the world.

As whitebait consists of immature fry of many important food species (such as herring, sprat, sardines, mackerel, bass and many others) it is not an ecologically viable foodstuff and in several countries strict controls on harvesting exist.

Usage examples of "whitebait".

Breakfast was a stew of kapenta, the fingerling dried fish he thought of as African whitebait, and a porridge of maize meal.

It does burgers and ribs too, and deep-fried whitebait, and has red-check tablecloths, and candles in wine bottles under great red vesuviuses of congealed wax, and complimentary breadsticks and gigantic pepper mills on every table, so I book the table for two, eight-thirty, name of Jackson, from a red-faced man with dirty fingernails who may or may not be the eponymous Luigi, then head back to my digs.