We have been watching Gourmet Farmer Afloat (on SBS on demand) during our travels and Evelyn was very keen to follow in their footsteps and visit a fish farm for a little bit of (easy) fishing.
I don't have the stomach for fishing. I like to eat fish but the catching / killing / gutting bit turns my stomach. We (or rather the rest of the family) do some fishing on Meander but so far we haven't been inundated with fish. The odd Flathead has crossed our path and provided a tasty morsel but trout was a whole new adventure!
Mountain Stream Fishery is a fish farm that also welcomes visitors (Thursday to Sunday) not far from Launceston. We arrived mid morning and hired a rod. We were advised to hire only one between us otherwise the kids would be catching them so fast our experience would pass in blur. We were also guaranteed to catch fish. Once we saw the ponds / dams teeming with life we realised why they they'd guaranteed a catch. In fact she said we'd probably not have to cast more than 3 times! And that was pretty close to our experience too.
The ponds were full of rainbow, brook, golden trout and salmon.
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| Just a few fish swimming in the dam... |
Arthur was up first... A few lessons from Giles on how to cast and he was off.
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| Casting practise |
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Caught an enormous rainbow trout within the promised 3 casts (the ones that made the water anyway!).
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| Fish on the line! |
A firm grasp of the donger and the trout was quickly dispatched to the bucket.
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| Time to deploy the donger |
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| Arthur was very impressed with his catch! |
Evelyn was second...
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| Almost a catch... |
Took a few attempts to master the casting manoeuvre but once she got it in the water she was a winner.
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| Dispatching her rainbow trout |
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Evelyn fished up biggest trout of the day! Another rainbow. Happily deployed the donger and sent her trout to the bucket to hang out with Arthur's catch.
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| Check out the size of that baby! |
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Katherine had her heart set on catching a beautiful golden trout. But they're smart and managed to let the rainbows take her line. Disappointed and saddened by the 'no catch & release rule' she left the donger business up to Giles.
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| Katherine reeling in her rainbow |
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| Rainbow Trout 1, 2 & 3 |
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Giles attempted to calm things down by dipping the line in and out quickly to confuse the slower fish and encourage the clever golden to bite... This kind of worked as he hooked a Brook but the Goldens lived to swim another day!
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| Giles with his Brook Trout |
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| A family of fish! |
Our visit to Mountain Stream Fishery was a great adventure! And good value too! $5 to hire a rod and BBQ stuff plus $10 per kg of fish and free ice, as much as you want which was good news for our chilli bin / esky. I think it would be an awesome birthday treat idea. Imagine sending kids home with a fresh trout they've caught themselves instead of a dreaded lolly bag.... Recipes too, of course.
Trout #2 was also BBQed that night and shared with our neighbours (Dave & Jan) while camping at the Bay of Fires.
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