FISHERS are enjoying a rare Australian salmon bonanza at the A Shed docks in Fremantle.

The fish are found up and down the WA coast most autumns but haven’t been seen along the Fremantle docks for years.

Karl Steele and his brother landed two six-kilo whoppers Wednesday and say the port is teeming with the juicy fish.

“They’re really to easy to catch and go straight after the lure,” Karl says.

“We’ve caught an eight-kilo one before.

“If you get a really hot summer, you don’t get the salmon run up this far—they prefer a water temperature of about 19 degrees.”

Mark Beauchamp, vice-president of the Fremantle amateur angling club, says strict quotas are behind the spike in the number and size.

“I’ve been fishing in the Freo area for around 15 years and you rarely see salmon in the docks,” he says.

“But recently we’ve been seeing bigger schools of fish and larger specimens because the fishing quotas are kicking in.”

• Karl Steele with his freshly caught Australian salmon. Photo by Stephen Pollock

Karl reckons the salmon becomes “mushy” when cooked (my editor had told me to nab one for his dinner), and is only good as bait for shark and mulloway.

Not so, says Sean “the salmon whisperer” Mulcock, who owns Chalkys Fremantle, who swears they are lovely when smoked or made into patties.

“They have to be bled straight away, because they have a large vein running up the side of their body, and their flesh goes off quickly,” he says.

“I guess because it’s they’re migratory and swim long distances: they need to get the blood pumping around their body.

“They have a very strong taste and it lingers in the mouth because they are oily, so it’s best to smoke them or make them into patties.”

Australian salmon are not popular with chefs and consumers and are generally used for pet food, or for bait in rock-lobster fishing. They’re more closely related to Australian herring, rather then the better known orange-fleshed Atlantic salmon and other salmonidae.

Their name derives from European settlers, who’d noticed a similarity in appearance. They are caught in all southern waters of Australia, but mostly southern NSW and eastern Victoria.

The Steele brothers hail from Port Kennedy and came down to Freo after seeing on Facebook that another angler had landed a beauty.

by STEPHEN POLLOCK