Mandurah’s The Fisho wins small seafood business award at 2024 WA Seafood Industry Awards

A local fishmonger is celebrating after taking home a small business accolade at the 2024 WA Seafood Industry Awards.

Family owned business The Fisho took home the small seafood business award and co-owner Lydia Boyd said she was “ecstatic” with the win.

The business, which is known for its eye-catching blue trailers, has just celebrated its 15th anniversary.

Ms Boyd, pictured, and her husband Michael made the jump into business after serving in the Navy, with no prior fish mongering experience.

“I actually read an article about a seafood business that was for sale a couple of weeks in a row when I was having my cup of tea,” Ms Boyd said.

“And we knew we wanted to get out of the Navy ... so I called the guy and he said he owned the fish truck in Singleton.

“We went down there and I didn’t like anything about the actual truck that was there, but I thought ‘this is our home, Singleton. We could make this amazing’.

“We thought we could do something cool with it.

“So we worked for a whole year on the weekends at Fisho Singleton and Monday to Thursday we’d spend in the Navy.”

The Fisho has since expanded to two locations at Gilbert and Sons Fresh Market in Mandurah and BP Karnup, as well as visiting farmers markets.

Ms Boyd is passionate about providing sustainable local seafood to her customers but said in the business’ early days, it was sometimes a hard process to convince local fishermen to sell to them.

“We are really passionate about local seafood, and if WA don’t catch it, we want it Australian,” she said.

“We’re very passionate about wild caught produce too.

“You kind of had to prove that you’re going to be extremely loyal to them and then in turn they’re loyal to you. This was all of our dreams of what we wanted and then we just had to try to put our feelers out there to suppliers and fishermen, which isn’t the easiest thing.

“It just took a few years, but slowly things changed. At first we weren’t selling a lot of fresh and now 80 per cent of our produce that we sell every day is fresh.”

Ms Boyd said The Fisho also aimed to get more people comfortable with cooking seafood.

“There’s a real big stigma around it ... people have probably overcooked a piece of fish once and they’re afraid to do it again,” she said. “(But) day in, day out, everyone overcooks a steak but they keep going back for more.

“We’re so big with education with our staff, we’ve got beautiful recipes on our website and we really do try to say ‘hey, it’s actually not that hard’.”

WA Fishing Industry Council chief executive Darryl Hockey said The Fisho, which employs less than 10 full-time equivalent staff, had taken customer service to a new level.

“The Fisho’s enthusiastic and informed staff, along with a commitment to local seafood, are contributing substantially towards a positive public profile for the WA seafood industry,” he said.

The annual awards celebrate excellence across WA’s seafood sector and were presented on May 3.

Sea West, which runs premium catch and dine cruises from Mandurah and Rottnest Island, won the seafood experience award.