We had parked up on poison creek beach in Cape Arid National Park and I was busy reading the third book in the Hunger Games Trilogy in the Hilux while Joe was fishing for salmon on the beach. I was disturbed by the faint sound of Joe screaming. I thought he was in trouble, drowning or being taken by a shark so I dropped my kindle and rushed out of the car ready to face the worst scenario only to discover that Joe was not in fact drowning but he had hooked up a salmon. The past 6 weeks of our trip Joe has been on a crusade to catch Salmon off the south west Australian coast without much success. I don’t know how much more ‘salmon spotting’ I could take. Finally success, a school of salmon had wandered into the bay at the end of Poison Creek Beach. Joe spotted the salmon school and began casting lures out into it. The school came quite close to shore making it easy to land the lure behind the school and pull it through. Joe had caught his first salmon of our trip by its tail while screaming in ecstasy. Joe caught two salmon in quick succession. He cast out a couple of times and forced me to reel the lure in to catch myself a salmon. I had a couple hook-ups but failed to share Joe’s success in landing a fish (thankfully). Joe released one of the salmon he caught and processed the other – some for dinner and some for bait. We could only stomach a few bites of the cooked salmon as they are poor eating but fun to catch. I think if you put more effort into cooking it, masking it’s strong flavour with lots of sauce and onions and herbs and cooking it in a way that retains moisture to avoid it becoming too dry, then it is more palatable. We just chucked it on the bbq. It’s a shame they aren’t good eating because they are heavy fish with heaps of meat. Shaped like a torpedo, with thick flanks that produce hefty fillets.

Joe was so satisfied with completing the first fish in the Australian Holy Trinity of Fishing, he considered finishing the trip around OZ and returning to Perth. Then he remembered he still has Mulloway and Barramundi to go.