Just out of curiosity, how many spot prawns are there in one pound? These prices seem outrageously high considering you can get out for a day of guided prawning and salmon fishing at a very reasonable rate split between four people.
It's 12-16 per pound. Today's 4 pounds from T&T was 49 prawns but they were on the big side. Average in my experience is 13 or 14 per pound.
We've had mixed success with prawning during winter charters. My dad and I do a winter trip every year and a summer trip every couple of years. In the winter they drop 2 traps per person and the best haul we had in 4 traps was 140-ish prawns. The other times we've been it's in the 100-120 range for 4 traps. Winter 2020 we only managed to retrieve two of the four traps. One had a small octopus in it along with some prawn heads. Only wound up with 35 or so.
We've never even come close to breaking even on a charter but we go because it's fun. A great catch on a winter charter would be something like 10lb prawns, 8 crabs, one 12 lb chinook. That's 200 + 240 + 200ish in seafood for 800 + tax + tip. Even if we caught 3 chinook in the 10-15lb range we'd be looking at breaking even with retail seafood prices. Not complaining, just breaking it down because I like math
The math obviously changes with 4 people but I've been going on too long...