Winter in Southern
Australia is Salmon Season.
These are not the Pacific Salmon you buy
smoked in the best stores, these are Australian Salmon, a poor excuse for a
table fish. Up until recently they were used as Crayfish bait and cat food, but
since quality table fish are becoming harder to get the Salmon has been pushed
forward as suitable for the dinner table. (It's not)
I cant stand them and we have tried them
every which way to improve their flavor but to no avail, they're horrible. The
only exception is Fish Cakes…if you leave out the fish. (Bread crumb patties)
New Zealand Fur Seals around Elephant rocks
The terrible South winds that whip off Antarctica don’t stop until they reach me standing on the
cliffs at Elliston or Talia or Locks Well. The waves can sometimes be more than
50 metres high and when they crash into the cliffs it feels like horizontal
salt rain. Conditions have to be terrible for Salmon and the weekends are
usually pretty miserable affairs.. but you do catch a lot of fish.
This season I've made the 300km trek (each
way) three times already and hope to make one more before the colds, flu and
bitter cold drive me back to sit in the warm glow of the heater to sit out the
rest of Winter.
This is pretty much standard scenery from Port Lincoln in South Australia right through to Perth in Western Australia. Most is totally inaccessible but here and there you can get near enough to cast a line.
50 metre waves hit this cliff about half way up and the result is a virtual river of water pouring over the top making it absolutely impossible to fish in those conditions. Looking out to sea you can see nothing, nothing at all.
The winds are relentless and rarely below 25knots, so windy in fact that you cant pitch a tent or if you do they blow away when you get out of them. A couple of years ago a mate of mine got out of his 3 man dome tent during the night to bang the pegs back in and the second his foot left the edge of the tent it took off tumbling across the field. Next morning I found him asleep in the car and he had to walk a mile to the tent tangled in trees at the far side of a huge field, along the way he had to recover his possessions where they fell. He got most of it back but the tent was trashed…first time he'd used it. This shot was taken from a low cliff at Talia, this was literally right in front of the cliffs.
I used to sleep on the ground alongside the
car for protection but I'm getting too soft for that now, a couple of years ago
I bought a Toyota Ute and I now sleep in the back with a nice mattress and
covered in a heavy tarp, not very comfortable but way better that the other
options.
You have to battle Sharks to get your fish
in and for good measure Australian Sea Lions and New Zealand Fur Seals all join
in to snatch as many of your fish as they can. A Sea Lion can be the size of a
medium car and you don’t get between
them and anything they want, they lay peacefully on the beach near you until
they see your rod bend and then they start moving toward you. If you unhook the
fish and throw it to them they go back to their previous position but if you
keep the fish to yourself they attack your line as you bring in the next fish
meaning you lose a lot of gear. (and don’t get anymore fish)
This catch of small to medium Salmon was taken by a friend of mine in just one day.
If the fish are healthy and not bleeding I
release them straight back into the water but if they're bleeding badly I keep
them until I find a sucker to give them to.
This year I've caught around 100 fish and
taken about five, all of which I've given away at the cleaning tables.
Two years ago I entered a Salmon
Competition and took a fish nearing 8 1/2 pounds, thinking it stood a chance of
winning I didn't bleed or gut it until I got back to the comp hours later. I
was way off the winning weight so I was cleaning it when a boy came to admire
the fish, I sent him back to his parents caravan with my fish...he was so
pleased.. I'll bet his parents weren't when they all tucked into it that
evening. (First thing you MUST do with Salmon is bleed and gut them within
minutes)
My photos all show the area at it's best
because when the wind is up there really is nothing to see, white foam and
rain… and the salt ruins my cameras.
.