Houseplant

From the first PigeonWatcher to get to Christmas Day, Merry Christmas! I was woken up very early by an aggressively happy child. We went on our "traditional" family fishing trip yesterday and caught grandma's Christmas present.

Don't discount Australia if you can get in. Amazing country in terms of geography/climate, it's much like America in that it's so huge, so you can go skiing in the south of the country or enjoy the tropics of the far north with everything in between. Lots of beautiful, untouched coastline in Western Australia. Although Perth is a big city, the rest of the state is sparsely populated and doesn't have the visitor numbers of the east coast. There's also a good range of options for rural and city living.

Somewhat serious point, my predictably lefty, woke local library blocks all websites related to hunting and guns on their WiFi, yet PW gets past their filters 👍

I worked in the USA for a year. Long Island, New York. Great place and great people despite the reputation that New Yorkers have. Fishing was amazing. As a young man, it was an eye-opener in the sense of realising that there was a better quality of life out there (I'm from the UK originally).

I thought this was a bird watching forum 👍

Would be a vey cool experience. Despite having caught a few, I've never seen it myself. A mate saw big tuna busting up all over the place the other day, he said it was an incredible sight with diving gannets, dolphins and baitfish thrown in to the mix. Interestingly though, they couldn't get the tuna to hit the lures they were casting.

Not an unreasonable price if there is a good chance of getting on to a fish. The thing that would hold me back is the catch and release aspect. It's not that I want to kill everything, but neither do I want to play a large fish to exhaustion just for fun. Just my personal ethics. No judgement of others.

I've ordered hundreds of items from AliExpress and it's gone wrong in less than 1% of orders, mostly around COVID and even then, I got a full refund. Mostly fishing gear, but also hunting and camping stuff too. Buy well, choose vendors and items with good reviews. Buy Chinese goods "direct" from the vendor or via multiple middlemen in the UK and rest of the world and pay ten times more. Your choice.

Well, I do like pakoras 😋 Might try it next time. A little garam masala, chilly pepper and coriander. Can't see it being bad!

Went down a treat 😋

You may have surmised from one of my recent threads that my household has an awful lot of tuna to eat through. Now that we have had our fill of sushi and sashimi (if that's possible!), it's time to spread our wings a little. I decided to challenge myself with the tail sections of the fish. Just like any land animal, there are parts which are tougher than others and their preparation needs a little thought. Initially, I thought of making tuna tartar, but it might have been a little too much for my wife and son, so I settled on fish cakes. I cut the fish in to small cubes and mixed with onions and flavourings. I couldn't quite decide between Asian and Pacific flavours, so went with both! Coconut, chilly peppers, kaffir lime, fresh ginger, coriander, salt, pepper and lime juice. It seemed to work! Served with salad grown in our garden.

My wife did some rest home work and she said there were quite a few women in that state (it's always women, the husbands are already dead). They were begging her to euthanise them which of course she couldn't. Very sad. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c0j1z14p57po

I'll use the tuna gear next time! I would have put the fish down as a blenny or goby, but no, everything is back-to-front or upside down here. It's an estuarine triplefin (local slang, cockabully). We do have blennies, but they are more ornate. There is one species of endemic marine goby that I can find in the references and a few others that have made their way over from Australia. In addition, we have several species of freshwater goby which are like a big miller's thumb, remember those! Probably a longer answer than you anticipated, but I have an amateur interest in marine biology and this has been tonight's project.

(Very) small kipper today 😂

Exactly! Another bloodbath is pending.