Prawning is fun. And gastronomically rewarding! It’s best done when the moon is new – the darker the night the better.

It’s also best done during summer. Not only are there more likely to be prawns around (always a good start!) but you don’t freeze the proverbials off in cold water!

How do you prawn?

If you’re anywhere around coastal lakes, inlets or lagoons during the darker nights of summer, you’re likely to see people with bright lights and big nets wandering around the shallows. Almost certainly, they’re prawning.

The bright lights attract the prawns (and also allow you to see ’em, which is not easy!) and you simply scoop them up with your prawn net. When you’ve got enough, you take them home, boil them for a few minutes and enjoy your prawn feast.

Well, that’s the theory anyway. The execution – or reality – might be a bit different.

(a) there might be no, or very few, prawns running in the water you’re prawning (technically known as too high a water:prawn ratio).

(b) you might prawn all night and end up with not even enough to fill one hand. (Yeah, speaking from experience here!).

(c) the bloke next to you might end up with all your prawns ’cos he has a better prawn light (or he knows what he’s doing!).

(d) a myriad of other excuses reasons, not unrelated to other forms of fishing (too moonlit/too wet/too dry/too cold/too hot/too windy/not enough wind/wrong tide/etc).