We decided to try our luck at prawning again yesterday. This time we dropped the trap just before lunch and went back out to pick it up just before dinner. We figured that the number of prawns caught would scale linearly with the time the trap was down, giving us 62.5 prawns for a 5 hour set. Actually, to be honest, we expected more like 100 prawns since we reckoned that for the first hour word was just getting around about the hot new trap in town, and that by hour three prawns would be queued up at the entrance waiting to get in. In the end though we took home about 30 prawns, more than enough for dinner, but not the motherlode. Next time new bait and a new spot. Look out prawns.

The crew at their stations. Actually they’re getting a bit big and a bit too active for this solution, so we need to start brainstorming for our next strategy asap.

On our way out.

Last time I pulled the trap straight up by hand and nearly died. Pulling a small sea-anchor up four hundred feet is not easy! So this time we got smarter and ran the line up the mast on the staysail halyard. This meant the line came straight down the mast at a good angle for the halyard winch and we could just crank it up. It was still a lot of cranking, but much easier.

Back with the catch.

The unlucky prawns.