After a Kiwi woman chopped up a stingray to use as fishing bait, the dead animal struck back by injecting her with burning venom and leaving a barb deep in her flesh.

The woman, who did not want to be named, caught a couple of rays, removed their tails and left the barbs on the seat of her boat.

But as she pulled up crayfish pots and fishing nets off the North Island's east coast, one of the barbs jabbed her upper thigh.

"It's like a bee sting, like a burning sensation that just kept going. I tried to rip it out and I couldn't. I was hanging on, I couldn't sit down."

"It wasn't the one that got away, it was the one that bit me back."

The woman was airlifted to hospital where the stinger was removed.

Australian venom expert Ken Winkle said it was a freak accident he had never come across before, but it was not entirely surprising.

"This is a general phenomenon that a lot of venoms are relatively stable," Dr Winkle, director of the Australian Venom Research Unit at Melbourne University, told AAP.

"It's not too surprising that a stingray barb left 24 hours is still capable of injecting active, nasty venom.

"But obviously with stingrays it's a lot more than the venom, because you've got an actual injury that's quite nasty, too."

AAP, The West Australian February 2010