We got back in yestrday evening after a couple of days fishing, this was our secound trip this week, as we landed our catch last friday so we could take advantage of the good prices at the end of last week.

We have been working out to the southered again off the lizard, in the beginning of the trip we were seeing a nice bit of squid and cytlle with some whitings, haddocks brills, sole andthe lemons were starting to show. The last few days the lemons have come on stronger and we are seeing a couple of baskets a go.

The lemons start off up in lyme bay and make there way down the coast and at present the best of the fishing is off the eddystone, where the local inshore fleet usualy see some good catches for the next couple of weeks.

This year with the weather being cold the fish are bunching more than usual, so if your in the right place at the right time you could have a big hit of lemons.

We are landing our catch today and it will be sold at PTA tomorrow, we have a few jobs to do today, we have a hydrolic pipe to replace and a new valve for our fish conveyor, Selex are also coming aboard, to fix our sataliite comunication system, as it decided to go down on us last trip.

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We sailed last wednesday and we headed west and shot to the south of the scillies, the weather when we sailed was fresh from the northeast and a large swell was starting to build. Before we left I had a forecast and we were going to have a series of low pressures pass overhead with the wind being cyclonic and strong at times so we new this would be an unpredictable trip.

The fishing started off not to bad with a bit of monk and some nice flats but by later on wednesday the swell was huge and this effected the fishing quite alot. So I steamed east for an hour and shot and towed east up towards the lizard, the fishing started to improve and we were seeing a few cuttles a nice bit of squid and a good bit of prime.

Meanwhile off the coasts of France and Spain they were getting a battering, with winds reaching storm force 10 and 11, and we were lucky as sitting in the middle of the lows we had very little wind but just a huge swell to contend with. Usualy this sort of weather sits over the top of Scotland or Faroes and we have a run of westerly winds, but with the jet stream being so far south, it is the Iberian peninsula that is having our normal winter's weather.

We arrived back into Newlyn on friday to land our catch, as the wind had gone out to the west and we had a gale of wind. We had plenty of jobs to do as we have been non stop the last few weeks. We mended our nets up and had a good clean up, we had some boards to replace down the fishroom and an oil change to do as well.

The forecast was poor for today so we are hoping to head out again on monday, after we have had a well earned break, the fish will be sold at PTA on monday morning.

There has been plenty of large palagic boat activity down our way

 this year with Scottish, Irish and Dutch vessels passing us going to and throw to the grounds to the south and west of Ireland. The western Endevour passed really close one Morning I got some good shots of her as she passed,

il try to put them on the Blog.

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We sailed last wednesday night and we are due into land our catch to PTA this evening. The fishing has been difficult this week and we have had to move grounds alot to stay fishing, we have a good mix of prime and flats but the whitefishing has been slacker. 

This is quite the norm for mid february as it can always go slack this time of year and with a long spell of cold easterly windson top, this has made the situation worse.

When it's like this we are usually glad of a southwest blow to stir things up a bit and with this week looking more unsettled it should do the trick. Friday is looking poor with the wind going out to the southwest, so I know i don't usually wish for poor weather but this is a much needed exception.

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We sailed last friday and headed back out to the grounds to the south of the scillies, the fishing wasn't that great but what we were catching was prime fish.

We had extra work to do this week, we were asked to do some discard trials this week by Dr Tom catchpole, who works for CEFAS, which is the fishiery science body for the UK.

We work two nets which is a method known as twinrigging, the best thing about the project that CEFAS have set up, is that it is in partnership with us the fisherman and we are being asked about the best ways to reduce our discard rate. This is a really good approach and we are designing nets that can help to combat this problem and we are getting finacial help with this from CEFAS itself.

We chose to trial a larger mesh stocking and codend on one of the trawls to see if this would reduce the discards and not cause to much of a financial loss. So far so good after the last trip at sea things are looking good with not to much of a finacial loss but a reduction in the discards, which  is a great start. With having two trawls this makes the compairing very easy and we did this every haul for five days and we weighed the two catches and the discards each haul so we had an accurate count each haul, so by theend of the week we could start to see some intresting trends emerging.

This information will be sent back to Tom at CEFAS in lowestoft for further analysis, other fisherman are also doing the trial this year as well with differing solutions to the problems so it will be intresting what the outcome wil be.

Trawling down here in the southwest does not have a high discard rate, it is well under 10% and the discard does not contain marketable pressure stocks, but any reduction in the discards is welcomed by the fiherman and we are glad to be part of the project.

We finished our trip last night and the boat sailed again,Alec has the boat away this trip and the scientist are onboard again continuing the trials.

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We sailed on saturday and for the time of year the weather has been quite settled, the fishing has been steady, with a good mix of fish. We have travelled around a bit in the search for the best fishing, we started the trip away off to the south of the lizzard, then we moved to the west by a dozen miles and now we are to the south of the scillies.

Its been a cold old week with a constant breeze from the east which has been strong at times, so we have had to wrap up warm. With low presssure out to the west, there has been quite a large lazy swell running most of the trip but its quite a clean swell.

This type of weather is perfect for the local surfers who have been out in their droves this week enjoying the waves, at least we can say we have rode the surf before it reached them.

We are due in tomorrow evening to land, we are hoping for a better market, as it's Valentines day soon and we are hoping that the valentines will be romancing over a plate of the finest fish, obviously the perfect combonation!

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We sailed early last saturday morning and with a huge spring tide due over the next few days, we headed away off to the southwest so that we could get out of the strongest of the tide.

The fishing started off not to bad, but as we had just put new warps aboard,  I thought that the fishing was down a little. With new warp being very greasy when it first goes on the winch, it can cause extra drag in the water as the grease goes fluffy to look at on the wire and it acts as if the warp is twice as thick in the water. This can cause extra drag which means that the trawl doors are not able to achieve the spread that we need, so consequentely our nets are not open to what they should be.

This is quite the norm with new warps and I tried to compansate for this by lengthening the amount of warp that we shot, it did help but not enough. After a couple of days the grease bedded into the warp and the spread started to increase again and by the third day the spread and the fishing was back to normal.

The weather turned poor on the monday and the fish slacked off to the west as the tide reached its peak. So we steamed east by a dozen miles and got back into the fishing again and we started to catch a few cuttles in amoungst the catch. The last couple of days were the best of the trip and we started to see a nice few haddocks with a good mix of megs, monk, squid and gurnards each haul.

The tide started to cut on tuesday and this probably helped the fishing, on monday at the height of the tide it was flowing like a river with 1.5knots of tide behind us and this was in an area where we go to get out of the tide. When the tide is flowing hard I am often suprised that we catch anything at all as its hard to imagine the fish being able to stop near the seabed.

We arrived back into Newlyn on thursday morning to land and take on ice, fuel, and stores, so we should be ready to sail again tonight

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We sailed last Friday with Rupert the cameraman from the BBC onboard once again, as the last two trips that he sailed with us were bad luck, we asked him to take a turn out of himself this time before we sailed. The first trip that Rupert did with us was back in december, when we were forced back in after two hauls with by a vicious storm. The next trip was the last trip when thehydrolic clutch went down, so we thought that he must of been carrying bad luck with him, so we had to peform the taking out of a turn.

This must of done the trick, as when we sailed we had lovely fine weather and very good fishing. Rupert was able to get plenty of filming done and we had a very enjoyable trip, being filmstars for the forthcoming series to be shown on BBC4 called A History of Fishing.

We headed back in on monday evening with a nice bit of fish aboard so we could catch a good market. We had a quick turn around and said our goodbyes to rupert and this time we had Tom come with us for a trip. Tom is studying photography at falmouth university and he asked if he could come to take some photo's for his disatation.

Once again the weather was good as was the fishing, but yesterday the fishing slacked off and with a NW gale coming through the night we headed off in as we had quite a bit of work to do.

We put new warps on today as the old one's needed repalcing, it was quite a messy job as they were very greasy, but it's a good job done and we are hoping to sail again later tonight.

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We sailed last saturday night and headed to the grounds to fish, as we were shooting the nets I could hear an unhealthy clanking noise coming from the engineroom, the fire alarm started to ring off as well. I headed down to the engineroom to investigate and was met with smoke and sparks coming out of the auxillary engine gearbox.

This didn't look good, so I stopped the enngine andhad a look inside the clutch box. The teeth on the clutch were all over the engine bed and there was bits of metal on the deck plates in the engineroom. There was no way that this was going to be fixed at sea so, I hauled the gear back up with the gear retrieve and headed back to Newlyn.

We phoned paul our engineer and he very kindly came down early on sunday to look at the job and he told us that it was beyound repair. So we stripped the clutch box down and had a look at the drive shaft, the drive shaft was damaged as well, so paul suggested that we fit a direct drive shaft and do away with the troublesome clutch as this was not the first time this had happened.

We contacted C&O engineering in newton abbot and they said that they could do the job no problem at all. By wednesday evening that had made a coupling and a new drive shaft and we picked it up and it was aboard the boat that evening. We spent the day today putting the new shaft to the engine and lining it all up and I am glad to say (touch wood) that all is working welll again.

Once again many thanks to Paul and the men at C&O for getting the job done so quick. The weather hasn't been that great so we have only missed a couple of days,  were hoping to sail again tonight so lets hope we can get a weeks work in without to many problems.

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We Sailed again in the early hours of wednesday morning and shot where we had left off the trip before. The fishing had slacked off to what is was the day before, so we had a search around, but we never found the fishing any better elsewhere.

Quite often we find that after a very strong blow the fishing can go slack, as the sea goes milky with all the stirring up, so we canonly presume it must be like a fog on the seabed and the fish can't see enough to feed. 

The southeast gale we had the day before reached storm force for quite a few hours so it was enough to unsettle things. Later on the thursday the fishing started to improve and by friday it was business a usual with a nice few monks, megs. whitens, brills and cuttles to be had.

Unfortunatly by friday evening we had a southerly 9 so we headed off in out of it, we landed what we had and went home for the night. The wind has eased today so I'm hoping to head off this evening,  I'm also hoping that it hasn't effected the fishing to much this time.

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We sailed again early thursday morning and headed off to where we left off the day before. The fishing was still good with a nice mix of fish with a few monks, megs, hake, lemons and cuttle, we were not catching a huge volume of fish, but it was quality, high value fish so it was a decent living.

So all was going well until on janis watch we slowed up a bit, but as it was poor weather andwe were on one of our regular tows we didn't think much of it. So we went to haul as usual and when we took the port net aboard, we found it to be badly torn.

Luckily we carry a spare onboard so we shot the spare, but then we had to mend the torn net. The wind was from the northeast and it was blowing quite hard (6-8), so as you can imagine our fingers didn't take long to go numb. We mended up as much as we could but it was obvious that there was a lot of net missing so we decided to leave it to when we got in, I have to say it wasn't a difficult decision.

We landed our catch last night and we came down this morning and with our Dad's help we managed to put the net back together again. It's always easier to mend a large rip when your in the harbour, as you can spread it out and you are not rolling around, having a job to stand up and cut the knots.

The weather is easing again tonight, so we are sailing again in the early hours, I don't think we will get long it's looking poor again on saturday but we'll get what we can and avoid that Tow where we had the damage.

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