Me I still do but with a scoopnet now and a led light

 Those days could be back soon.  Our rfbl fees gave funded a release of prawns into the river.   Hope to see the drag nets return soon.

 Fingers crossed those days return. Wonder how many younger fw members know what a ' mantle ' is? 

a gas mantle not many i would think they were delicate but seen them make it over the roughest roads (alwasy had a spare one but )

 yep,down by gloucester park was our famillys favourite  prawning spot.

And from your Cobbler post that is exactly what I was doing when I got Stung!

Also sitting shoulder to shoulder with people scooping prawns on the old Mandurah bridge. Couldnt get up for a leak because someone would grab your spot.

But grew up over east dragging the Myal Lakes system for prawns with the old man.

Still some of the best memories I have as a kid.

And the other thing we did was just swim out from Avalon Beach, grap a few abs on the reef, smash the sh**te out of them and have a kings feast. I dont recall licences etc in those days.

 We used to prawn at the Aquarama jetty. Go down there in the afternoon and walk along the first part of the jetty that tee'd off to the right and run parallel to the beach and throw in a few handfuls of chook pellets. We would come back later on, 1 drag up one way for 50 meters or so, and then a drag back again to the start point and that would almost fill the baby bath. Home to boil them up, heaps of fresh bread and tonnes of vinegar, cold beer for the oldies and if we were lucky, it would be a nice cold drink from Letchfords for us kids. Used to love the orange and the cola beer. See how many good memories that brings back.

Cheers

Dale

Usedto go around Nedlands ( i think ) with my grandfather and uncle, usually the whole family were there for the evening. The women would basically make a camp, and Tea, coffee scones etc were plentifull .

My grandfather got a hold of an old washing machine tub ( like the one pictured ) He welded in a pipe to act as a flu in the centre of the tub, it was placed on a few bricks and a fire was lit under it. Straight river water was bucketed into it and brought to the boil. The prawns and crabs were cooked straight away and the women would peel most of them that night to be eaten on fresh home made bread.

Imagine trying to do that ( light a fire etc ) in this day and age at Nedlands or any other place within city limits .

The type of machine . The top tub was used to boil the water and cook prawns + crabs .

warm barmy nights dragging a damn net. was always some good laughs when the person on the deep end fell into a hole or just dropped off the edge . used to drag the net near the Raffs in front of the rowing club. only prob we ever had was thousands of jelly fish . great hauls of prawns and crabs tho. with the odd cobbler thrown in.

we used to drag near the raffs it wasnt unusall to see at least 30 or 40 gasd lanterns twinkeling away on the banks and fires under coppers , think thats what our gruby unwashed youth of today have lacked in their development , its called being part of a family and doing things together

Simpler times!! How about before mobile phones send the internet! It was much more simpler before these two inventions came about! But I do remembers dragging the prawn net around the raffles area and hand lining for cobbler on the jetty opposite como there. I think the building was the white knight or something like that anyway. 

I got to say some of my fondess memories were those nights dragging the Prawn net through the Swan, haha! laughing when the missus had to get the deep end, all the jellyfish you'd get some nights, that was a downer but if I recall correct I think you were allowed 9kg's of Prawns and every now and then you had that bumper drag that got you close to your limit.

They where the areas we used to drag with the family and as others have said the meal of hot prawns fresh bread and butter and for us kids Letchfords cola beer. many a time we saw the sun come up whilst hogging into the meal of a life time. You could leave the car and come back to it and it would be in the same condition you left it in. There was no mess left on the fore shore no piles of dead blowies left about to poison the local dogs. It was all one big social outing for a lot of people. Arrrh those were the days, what happened ?