5 Life Lessons I Learned From Prawning (Prawning Tips Included)

(Lobster-size Prawns I caught in JB – May 2011)

If you think prawning’s easy, think again. For more than 1.5hours that fateful day, I had no catch at all. Return on investment for time spent and eye muscle strain during the process = a big fat zero! After a master gave me some tips, I managed to catch lobster-size prawns just by changing my strategy!

5 Lessons I’ve Learned:

1) Fat opportunities don’t come to you. You have to go to them.

One nice Malay man at the prawning place took the trouble to explain to me that I had to move my line and not stay in any one spot for too long. The prawns were not all gonna come swimming towards me like sharks smelling blood. They’ll probably have a gathering in some corner and I’m supposed to GO get their attention.

2) People help those they like; therefore, be likeable.

Firstly, dress well. Clothes maketh a man. I had probably the most “fancy” dress that day. My attire was more suited for a day of shopping than for prawning. However, it got me the attention of the Malay man (one of the staff members there) and he noticed that I had no catch for about 1.5 hours and was getting bored. He came over to teach me how to prawn! On top of that, after my 4-hour prawning session, he even lent me his big plastic tank to transport my prawns back. (That kept them alive till I got them home to Singapore)

I was an attentive student that day, and it paid off. And my teacher was pleased with my catch that day.

3) Be willing to make changes, however unpleasant.

It was horrible. Having to cut up worms and use them as bait. URGH! Having to cut them AND stick them onto the hook with my bare hands was double URGH. It’s times like that one that I had to change my representation of what was happening. I had to imagine I was doing the prawns a BIG favour by giving them a yummy dinner (their version of a yummy dinner, not mine).

I used to use chicken liver/heart(couldn’t tell which) as bait. And that was easy to cut up! It wasn’t wriggly, for one. And definitely dead.

Change the bait when it’s not giving you the results you want.

Albert Einstein: “Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results”.

Here’s a tip from my friend Mark Niam: Use earthworms. Fat, juicy earthworms. Prawns LURVE them!

4) Observe what others are doing and ‘model’ them as best you can.

I noticed a Malay man was getting pretty good catch and he was using small fish as bait. I plucked up enough courage to go over and politely ask him for one small fish.

That did the trick.

A lobster-size prawn bit the tail of the fish bait and got hauled out of the water by me. The bait went back in and after 15 mins or so, another huge prawn caught onto the body of the fish. And back went the bait, this time with only the head and bulging eyeballs. The 3rd catch soon came. One tiny fish, three big prawns. Humongous return on investment there!

All because I saw what he was using and had enough courage to ask.

5) FOCUS

I had to train my “monkey brain” to focus on the task at hand. The guy who taught me to prawn said I was looking everywhere instead of focusing on the indicator float which would tell me if a prawn was tugging at the bait.

It appeared that I had been too eager to find out what everyone else was doing to pay much attention to what I was doing.

Same thing in Life: if you’re not looking out for opportunities yourself, they’ll pass you by. (It’s worse if the prawn eats your bait and then flees!)

So there you have it. My 5 lessons from prawning! If you have any prawning tips, do share!