About a 45-minute drive from Hobart is Salmon Ponds, the most famous and oldest fish farm in the southern hemisphere. It was established in 1860, and has been a popular picnic spot for Hobart residents and visitors since the late 19th century. Surrounding the ponds is a lovely garden in the style of a of a traditional English garden, in which stands a roughly hewn old house, that housed the factory. Here you can learn many interesting facts - for example, about how difficult it was to transport salmon and trout caviar from England 150 years ago, take a walk around the old building and look at the fish ponds. By the way, you can feed the fish in the ponds themselves - trout and salmon are still found here.
It is interesting that, despite the name Salmon Ponds, here in the absolute the vast majority of trout, not salmon. The fact is that salmon are a migratory fish, it spends most of its life at sea, and it only comes back to the river to reproduce, it returns to the river to spawn. When they were building this plant and ordered the first batch of caviar from England, it was thought that once the salmon had been the salmon would return to the River Derwent. Several attempts were made, but for reasons unknown, the salmon released into the sea never returned. However Trout, bred and reared alongside the salmon and not a migratory fish, spread rapidly throughout Tasmania's lakes and rivers.
Another attraction of Salmon Ponds is the incredibly popular with anglers of all stripes, the Trout Museum with its mesmerising collection. The museum's exhibits clearly demonstrate the changes that have taken place in the fishing equipment over the course of a hundred and fifty years. Here you can fishing reels, fishing rods, types of lures and other fishing equipment. Books, souvenirs and themed items can be bought in the museum itself.
