For the longest time I’d been wanting to write a story about snoek to share the recipes I love so much: smoorsnoek, breyani, crunchy fishcakes, fat snoek fillets lightly smoked over oak shavings on the coals, roe fried in garlic butter, and sticky honeyed sweet potatoes, without which no one should eat braaied snoek… It was early winter and according to the weather report, clear, windless conditions were forecast along the Cape West Coast for the following day. Perfect for a snoek shoot, I thought, and I let Berna know to pack her camera bags. At the crack of dawn we’d head for Paternoster to photograph the boats beaching on the sand with their catch. The colourful vessels of this picturesque West Coast village are known to bring in a steadfast harvest of fat snoek during winter – our beautiful photographs were in the bag.
A BAD DAY FOR SNOEK
But my plans didn’t pan out. From Melkbosstrand onwards, a thick fog blanketed the West Coast road. And when we arrived in Paternoster, there wasn’t a fisherman in sight. Two or three
