Our dam, back then, was still full of water. Today, after another couple of years of drought, the level is much lower. We know the trout are still in there. An uncle caught one recently, and he was a big, hook-jawed monster. The uncle threw him back.

We have caught a few over the past couple of years and eaten them all. At certain times of the year, during the late spring, early summer, they taste OK. The dam is flushed with fresh water. But in the winter, they taste muddy. I have been told trout are not the best fish for farm dams. Yellow belly (native perch) are recommended, but it is difficult getting hold of them in my area. Apart from tasting muddy, trout wont breed in stagnant water, but native perch will.

To get around the problem of them tasting muddy, we tried smoking them in our Weber barbecue. We packed the trout in rock salt for 24 hours and put some chunks of hickory in a bucket of water to soak. The next day, after getting a small amount of heat beads nice and hot, we placed a chuck of well-soaked hickory on the coals. You don't need the normal amount of heat beads, because if the oven gets too hot, the fish will dry out. The salt cures the fish, so the heat is really only needed to provide the smoke. We washed the salt off the trout and dried the fish as some people say that smoke sticks better to the surface of meat if it is slightly sticky. We put the trout on a plate in the Weber and closed the lid. After about 20 minutes we took the fish out. It was delicious hot, and even better the next day served with a simple salad.

We might not get all the wonderful jewels of the sea readily available in our neck of the woods, but with a couple of dams full of yabbies and fish, we can at least eat some seafood that hasn't travelled halfway across the country. Enough perhaps to supplement the fish we can buy on our irregular city visits and freeze for our weekly homemade fish and chips. The town fish and chip shop is 20 minutes of dirt road away, but the kids still need to know the joy of fish and chips on Sunday night.