I HAVE been saying it for years.

It is not necessary to travel long distances to catch cracker fish.

Let me tell you about an outing I had recently.

Sitting at home in Fingal with nothing in particular on my mind I just happened to look out the window and noticed a sizeable sea crashing into the southern face of Boondelbah Island.

Looking in an easterly direction I estimated a swell of around two metres on a dropping tide.

The wind, a moderate southerly.

Snapper time!

I packed ‘Stinkpot’ as quickly as possible and opened the freezer to check my bait supply.

Nothing! apart from a handful of dried up king prawns and three packets of mullet fillets from the 2023 mullet run.

Checking the time of day it was 20 minutes to 2 o’clock when I left the beach in Kiddies Corner.

Driven along by nine wild horses I motored straight for the Outer Light.

Funny how I have been doing this for over forty years and yet I was as excited as a kid in a toy shop.

Conditions were perfect as I dropped anchor and frantically baited one rod with a prawn and the other with a strip of elderly mullet.

The rods were set in the rod holders and it was time to wait.

Two or three minutes then ‘Zzzzzzzz’, something had swallowed the prawn and was heading north at a great rate of knots.

A cracker snapper smack on six kilograms was scooped aboard and into the iced esky.

‘Zzzzzz’ and off we go again. The mullet strip had been gobbled up by a 3.5 kg snapper.

And so the craziness continued until I had landed another half dozen super snapper.

Enough.

Up came the anchor and home I motored.

I recall motoring up my driveway with ‘Stinkpot’ in tow – 4pm!

What a trip.

Time to clean the fish and cryovac the fillets and into the freezer.

Phew.

By John ‘Stinker’ CLARKE