This paper considers how the trade in cured fish influenced social, political and economic relationships between Europeans and Chinese in small maritime communities in a way that was markedly different from the experience in metropolitan areas where Chinese fish hawkers and commercial fishers faced considerable discrimination. Chinese fishers played a key role in the evolution of the commercial fish trade in Victoria up to the late 1870s. Like their counterparts in California, urban based Chinese fish hawkers and commercial fishers faced open hostility and legal restrictions yet, in the period up to the 1880s, those who worked as curers along the Victorian coastline had a relatively harmonious relationship with local European commercial fishers. There were positive financial benefits for the Europeans selling their catch to the fish curers yet, at the same time, there were also potential environmental impacts as only particular species were suitable for curing. But the trade in cured fish had other consequences beyond the fishery where they were caught. The trade established economic links to Chinese miners on gold fields in other colonies and it also connected colonial Victoria to markets in Singapore and Hong Kong.