Perth's North Mole is a Western Australian rite of passage. When the first storms of autumn push north-westerly winds and serious swell into Fremantle Harbour, big pink snapper move tight to the stones and a small army of land-based anglers turns out with 15-foot rods, six-ounce sinkers and buckets of frozen pilchard burley.
In his latest video, Coupe-driving WA YouTuber KookFishing made his second attempt at the style and put 17 minutes of self-described chaos online. The result, posted two weeks ago and on roughly 17,000 views, is the most honest piece of land-based snapper content released this season.
"Northwest winds, high swell equals hopefully big snapper," he told the camera while rigging at home. "If you can get out onto the moles during these first few storms, you're in for a pretty decent chance."
The rig was sound: a snelled 6/0 octopus and 6/0 circle, six-ounce grapple sinker, an Ocean's Legacy Backbone 15-foot 2-inch heavy three-piece rated 30-60 lb cast weight, and a Stella 10000. He acknowledged a Saragosa 10000 would do the same job for less money and admitted he had been considering one. The bait box held ten herring, a frozen bonito, leftover squid donated by mates and a freezer-burned two-kilo pack of pilchards earmarked for burley.
What the rig did not survive was the conditions. The first whole-squid bait was lost on the cast. The next attempt with herring took three goes to seat the sinker into the swell. Bait robbers - rats, in his words - stripped the squid throughout the session. KookFishing's verdict on the experience was unsparing.
"This kind of fishing is difficult when you've never done it before and you've kind of got no guide to go off and no recommendations," he said. "You just kind of think of what you need and you get out there for the first time and you realise you were severely unprepared. Use this video as a lesson, guys."
A second rod fishing a 20 g Mol-osi Marksman metal in case of tailor or Australian salmon was retired within minutes after the headwind made it unworkable. Dolphins worked bait in front of the wash. Another angler within earshot offered a one-line review: "You're wasting your time."
"Maybe they are right. They are extinct. Some are extinct," KookFishing replied to the camera, half-laughing. "It really feels like it. Catch nothing but a cold."
The sting in the tail came after the upload was off the editing timeline. The session blanked. Two days later, his Facebook feed lit up with photos of Perth pink snapper landed from the same stretch of mole he had just left.
"After recording that video, I think a couple of days later, I seen on some Facebook posts that North-Co ended up firing up with snapper," he said. "But I guess that's just how the cookie crumbles, as I like to say."
The video closes with KookFishing canvassing his audience for a series. The proposal is open: if viewers want a North Mole snapper hunt run as a recurring storyline in the same shape as his existing mulloway series, episode one is already in the bank.
For anglers planning their own first land-based session at North Mole, the most useful piece of advice in the entire 17 minutes is incidental.
"You can't even step anywhere near the water's edge up the top here," he said while scouting a position closer to the water for his rod holder. "It's just really, really dangerous, actually."