The crew behind YouTube's Aussie Lobster Hunters channel woke at 6:30 a.m. on Flinders Island knowing the weather window was about to slam shut. By the time they pulled the anchor, a long northerly was already wrapping into water that should have been sheltered, and the morning's job — retrieve pots set in shallow reef before 30-plus-knot gusts arrived — had turned into the riskiest pull of the trip.
"Today is going to be a not-so-good day weather-wise. We've got 30-plus knots coming down from the north," the skipper said in the opening of vlog four, released on 17 May 2026. "Our gear's hidden in behind some rocks and we're hoping to be able to get it back today so that we can shoot it back in and have another day on anchor."
The forecast he read off the chart plotter painted a grim three-day picture: 25 knots gusting to 40 by early afternoon, swinging westerly overnight, then a full day of 30 knots out of the south-west tomorrow. "Then it comes up south-easterly and then we finally get a good day Thursday, Friday, and then it comes back down again," he said. "So, anyway, is what it is."
Southern Rock Lobster shy off the bite in dirty, rolling water. "The way the Southern Rock Lobster work is, normally in shallow, if the swell picks up and it's rough, you don't tend to catch anything," the skipper explained as he nosed the boat onto a reef edge with white water breaking off the bow. "We don't need to be getting cleaned up by any breaking waves as we're trying to pull shallow gear."
The morning's catch was patchy but legal, and the moral conundrum of breeding season ran through every pot. "Big girl. Lots and lots of eggs. This is why we can't keep them," the skipper said as a heavily berried female was lifted from a pot. "If you're new to watching, this time of year they're full of eggs because they're breeding and we like to look after the industry. So we let them go."
For stretches it felt like every pot was carrying females. "Female. Female. Female. Female. Female. Female. And male," the crew rattled off in deck-radio cadence. One of the very few takeable males, an eastern rock lobster Lockie wanted for the freezer, had to be specially tagged. "He just likes to eat them. So that means I've got to use a special tag to put on them so we can take it home. And we're only allowed like fifteen or something a year. So that's one of his take-homes," the skipper said.
The most striking biology lesson of the run came from a lobster with mismatched back legs. "Look at these two back legs. He's regrown them. And the same with these two. I broke these two off and broke these two off and they're all growing brand new. That's why they look much smaller. Otherwise they'd all be big and orange like these," he explained.
By late morning the wind had stiffened enough that the skipper was already thinking about where to shoot the gear for the next pull. The trade-off: drop pots inside on productive reef and risk the southerly blowing them ashore, or shoot deeper, safer ground in six to eight fathoms that had so far produced nothing. "Where I can shoot the pots now, I can't — I'm going to struggle to pull them tomorrow morning," he said. "At the same time, I can't shoot the gear for tomorrow where I'd like to pull it tomorrow because it's currently, there's three-metre wave, so I'm not going to risk shooting it there."
The last pot of the morning held one lobster. "This morning was not the best, not the worst," the skipper said as the boat turned for the anchorage. "It's a me problem. I'll work it out."