I walked to my local beach last night with 4 cray baits I'd prepared on the kitchen bench. The first two caught a 3kg smoothhound each inside 10 minutes. The next two baits went out, but nothing happened. After 30 minutes, I decided to check. Both baits, which were on the bottom, were stripped bare. I'm guessing it was lice, but it could have been crabs who were running the gauntlet. I'll use floats next time.
The day before I met a gentleman from the UK at East Clive. I was doing a recce at the time. George was using prawns (or were they shrimps?) as bait and had caught smoothhounds previously, but no snapper. I could only find cooked prawns at the supermarket. What should I be looking for? I'm fast running out of crayfish.