Fremantle's North Mole is a Western Australian rite of passage. When the first proper north-westerly of autumn rolls a serious swell into the 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 pilchard burley. The fish do not always show. The fishermen always do.
WA YouTuber KookFishing - whose existing mulloway series has built a steady audience for the Coupe-driving, self-deprecating Perth lifestyle - posted his second crack at the North Mole snapper trip two weeks ago. The session is on roughly 17,000 views and is the most honest piece of land-based snapper content released this autumn.
"Northwest winds, high swell equals hopefully big snapper," he told the camera while tying rigs at home. "If you can get out onto the moles during these first few storms, you're in for a pretty decent chance."
The rigging was sound. A snelled 6/0 octopus and 6/0 circle, a six-ounce grapple sinker and 30-60 lb cast weight rod handled the swell. The rod itself - an Ocean's Legacy Backbone 15-foot 2-inch heavy three-piece - was matched with a Stella 10000, although KookFishing flagged that a Saragosa 10000 would do the same job for a fraction of the cost. Bait was a mix of ten herring, a frozen bonito, donor squid from his mates Salty Days and Dylan Coloran, and a freezer-burned two-kilo pack of pilchards earmarked for burley.
The rig did not survive 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, by KookFishing's count - stripped the squid throughout the session. The 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."
"You're wasting your time. Maybe they are right," KookFishing replied to the camera, half laughing. "They are extinct. Some are extinct. It really feels like it. Catch nothing but a cold."
The sting came after the upload was on the editing timeline. The session blanked. Two days later, his Facebook feed lit up with photos of Perth pink snapper landed off the same stretch of wall.
"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 pitch 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. The wash. The position of the rod holder. The decision to stay back from the edge.
"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. "It's just really, really dangerous, actually."