outbackjoe

June 9, 2017
by outbackjoe 1 Comment

Free Food Salmon Camp

Not happy with our $15 food spend from a salmon fishing trip of a couple years ago, this time we decided to go completely free. For this camping mission all food was supplied by work!

On the menu was peanut paste, long life milk, coffee, vegemite, butter, honey, mustard, vinegar, tomato sauce and 2 minute noodles. We were also forced to steal lemons from a neighbour’s tree based on medical advice that our special camp diet may have us contracting scurvy should we not include a source of vitamin C.

My favourite dish was peanut paste, straight from the cup. It was delicious and easy to prepare.

Of course we also ate salmon, either smoked or ceviche, drizzled in lemon juice. To supplement our tight vitamin C rations we collected a load of pigface fruit and sauteed them in a honey and butter mix. We bait fished each afternoon and night hoping to land something more palatable than salmon but unfortunately didn’t have much luck. One herring was all we could muster, and it really tasted great after a couple of days of mostly salmon and 2 minute noodles.

We cheated slightly and did fork out a bundle of cash for a block of highly nutritious red tin beer. It kept us fit, strong and satisfied over the several day camp. Thank you beer!

Tigerfish in Mozambique

Landing huge barramundi and salmon in rugged and isolated parts of Australia is incredibly manly and tough. Everyone knows that. But what about landing a river monster in remote Africa?

This monster tigerfish was caught in Lake Cahora Bassa in Mozambique. It’s not unlike the large tigerfish that Jeremy Wade caught on his TV show. I’ve been told that Jeremy Wade is super tough and ruggedly handsome and the similarities between him and myself are clear.

I was in Mozambique to help make this run better:

Some other pics from my stay:

June 10, 2016
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Anzac Day Salmon Mission

Wow it’s been over a year already since our last long weekend salmon hunt. This year, instead of Easter, we headed down for the Anzac Day long weekend.

There are many things different between this camp and our camp from a year ago. A big change is that this time we took quite a varied supply of food rather than just potatoes, carrots and onions. But perhaps the most significant change is the addition of a little mini miss outbackjoe!

We’re training her up nice and early to become an expert salmon spotter just like her dad.

On this camp we experienced an amazing salmon feeding frenzy. Salmon arrived in plague proportions and were jumping around everywhere right in front of our camp. The salmon were chasing herring into the shallows and were swimming right around us, even bumping into our feet. The herring were jumping out of the water and beaching themselves on the sand in an effort to escape the pursuing salmon.

We caught a butt load of salmon. More salmon than I’ve ever seen. And as a bonus we had a free feed of beached herring that even the staunchest animal activist would be happy with, since the herring died of natural causes. We chucked back most of the salmon we caught but cruelly slaughtered a couple.

Catching so much salmon is extremely tiring.

We tried something different with our salmon preparation this time – salmon civeche. Civiche is marinading raw fish in vinegar and citrus juice (plus whatever extra flavours you want, we used onions and chilli). The flesh goes white like it’s been cooked and remains mild flavoured and relatively tender. Sharni even described it as tasting “nice”, which is tremendous for Australian salmon. Last time she said it tasted like shit. There is a risk of getting food poisoning by eating salmon this way, but fortunately we have the finest sashimi chef skills so that we can safely prepare the raw salmon for marinading.

We also smoked some of the salmon. Last time we smoked salmon it was over cooked and pungently fishy. This time we were extra careful not to over cook it and it actually turned out pretty good. Also it helped that we discarded the darker coloured meat which minimizes the strong fishy flavours.

We had a great camp and improved our salmon preparation skills with some good civeche and smoked salmon. Bring on next salmon season! Maybe we’ll revert back to bringing bugger all food and living off fresh salmon and beer.

March 22, 2016
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New Article on Vehicle Emissions

Check it out here:

Emission Systems – Worth Tinkering?

February 20, 2016
by outbackjoe 2 Comments

Peak Beard at Wilbinga Camp

Just as I was starting to push through the itchy phase, sadly, a stern order was issued: the beard must go. What a tragedy it would be to have the beard removed without some photos of me flaunting it whilst fishing and camping. So a camping trip was commissioned to Wilbinga Beach north of Perth.

We caught a nice flat head and a tailor, both of which were deliciously prepared in the fish smoker. Fishing conditions weren’t ideal with the usual wind and weed keeping our bounty quite low. Other highlights included beach bocce and hours of fun watching people getting bogged on a particularly treacherous section of beach right near our camp.

The beard was promptly removed back home during the post camp washdown. I hope one day it will return bigger and better.

What’s Hong doing squatting on top of that sand dune?

February 18, 2016
by outbackjoe 4 Comments

Lane Poole – First Redfin

A couple of nights camping mission at Lane Poole with Mum and Nonna saw me land my first redfin perch! This perfectly complements my recent freshwater success with trout.

I caught two perch from the Murray River running nearby our camp site. One was too small to keep and the other a bit bigger but good enough to fry up for breakfast. We camped at Baden Powell camp ground which is perfect for camping with the oldies, with good toilets and fancy camp kitchens. We camped a couple of months ago, before the fires in the area that devastated Yarloop. It was quite cold as you can see by nonna rugged up catching some early morning rays.