Hunter customers flock to Commercial Fishermen's Co-Operative for Easter seafood

General manager Robert Gauta said there was a 100 metre queue of customers when the co-operative opened at 7am on Holy Thursday, which is its third busiest day of the year, behind Christmas Eve and December 23.

"That's about normal, there were a couple of campers that got here very very early, people like to be first," he said.

Mr Gauta said prawns were by far the most popular choice.

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"We've got some farmed tigers in there and we got some good local king prawns in this morning - they won't last all day, but we had some for the lucky ones this morning - hopefully we'll get some more in [Friday] morning as well," Mr Gauta said.

"We won't know until we get here [Friday] morning, even [Wednesday] night they went out to work but they came home early because the weather was too rough. They're planning on going tonight.

"We've got backup anyway, we'll definitely have prawns for sale, but if you want to come in early on Friday morning that's your best chance to get local king prawns.

"Prawns have been popular at Christmas time and Easter time for many many years, they're good to look at, they're good to eat and they're a good product to put on your table at Easter time to make things look good. It's a bit of eye candy."

He said customers were also opting for salmon, which can be prepared in several ways, snapper, crabs, lobsters and whole fish including barramundi and local flathead.

"It's a big mixture at Easter, it's quite across the board," he said, adding that coming together for a seafood meal over Easter was an important tradition for many families.

"It's fresh too, you know if you come to the co-op that it's fresh seafood and I think people love that."

Mr Gauta said trade was down slightly compared to last year.

"We think it's because everyone's getting out, you look at the airports and they're packed, people have been going out and doing their holidaying this year while they couldn't get away last year."

He said the co-operative employs an additional 10 to 15 people over Easter, bringing their total to around 38 staff.

He said the busiest staff were often those behind the scenes, such as those getting product out of fridges, in the depot receiving product and in the office.

"Our fish cutters have been doing 12 hour days for the last three days and our senior staff in the shop have been doing 10 hour days," he said.

"We start at 7am but we have to be here by five o'clock to get ready and it takes another hour or so to clean up afterwards and then get ready for the next day."

The co-operative will be open 7am to 1pm on Good Friday, when he is again expecting an early-morning queue of customers.

"It won't be too bad, it will be a quick line up, it will probably be 50 to 100 metres at most and we'll have that knocked over in the first hour. It will probably be at worst a 20 minute wait, but we're pretty quick."

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