Crystal Sea Trawling Blog

I have a trip off again this week, we have been picking away quite nicely the last few weeks. We have been catching more John Dory's of late, they usual start to shoal up again this time of year.

We put it down to the pilchards starting to shoal and the stronger autumnal tides causing the fish to bunch. The pichards have also started to swim closer to the shore and the ring netters are starting to have some good catches in the bay.

The Pilchards are the john Dorys favourite prey and they use their large potruding jaws to suck a passing pilchard into their mouths. They are an unusual shaped fish with a large flat body and they sit in the water with a low head on profile but upright instead of flat like a megrim or a sole.

I have been away at sea for another two weeks, so its about time I blogged again.

 The fishing has been good with a steady catch although last week over the big tide the fishing had become very flighty. It was quite frustrating at times keeping up with the fish as they were moving around a fair bit, but with nearly 2knots of tide in the water it was hardly suprising that the fish were moving around alot.

The average tidal flow down here in the southwest is around 0.7knots but this can become 1.5knots on the top of the springs but as last week  was an exceptionaly strong tide we had tidal flows of 1.8knots at times.

We generally go across the grounds with the tide, so as you can imagine after a 4hour tow we had covered an extra 4miles of ground, this can cause difficulties when handling the boat when were fishing as it is like trying to navigate the boat in a fast flowing river.

We have once again had some unusual catches, we had a golden haddock which is just a normal haddock but it is an albino and it has a golden colour to its skin rather than the usual blueish grey.

We have been picking away quite nicely the last few weeks, the weather has been up and down but it hasn't stopped us , only for a day last week when we had a full gale from the south.

 But as usual with fishing, things never run smoothly, we finished a 6day trip on thursday evening and turned the boat around and was ready to sail again within a couple of hours.

Alec had the boat away and I had a trip off, they just got settled into a trip after 24hours of good fishing, when all of a sudden the steering alarm rang off and we lost all the power steering.

Without the power steering it is very difficult to control the vessel whilst we are towing the trawls. Luckily we have a back up manual system that is connected directly to the rudder, so we were able to haul the gear and made for home using the old ships wheel that sits in the centre of the wheelhouse.(its not just for show).

The boat arrived back in Newlyn in the early hours of saturday morning, so we took the steering pump off and headed up to Brixham to hercules hydrolics, so they could asses the damage. The shaft inside the pump had wore bad and the support bearing had collapsed, and the parts we needed were up in sheffeild.

We have been busy since we left Tom's boatyard over 2weeks ago, the weather has been good and we have been able to put a few trips together.

 We got off to a good start with 2 good trips off in the deeper water to the southwest of the scillies, there has been a good run of haddocks on the grounds as well as some lovely sized megs and monks to go with it.

The area we are working goes down to 75 fathom which is 15fathom deeper than our usual grounds, you start to see deeper water species below 65fathom and we have had a few ourselves. We are seeing the odd greater forbeard(scoth hake as they have a tarten look to their skin) and we also had a six gilled shark.

We arrived back to Newlyn in the early hours of saturday morning after our 2week re-fit at Tom's yard in Polruan near Fowey.

We were lucky with the weather, which was a great help as we  managed to get the boat well painted up. We have also had a good re-fit with quite a bit of work being done around the boat.

The men at the shipyard had been kept busy and pulled out all the stops to get us ready in time to come down the slip on friday afternoon. We have had a crab tank fitted, two new seacocks, lots of welding work, caulking of the seems and butts around the hull, new sheaving on the starboard side, new hydrolic levers for the crane and pipes, a new flat screen tv with a built in cuboard and much more.

As usual Alan and Paul Tom's were really helpful and made sure all the work was done in time, so many thanks to them and the men at the yard. Also to paul our engineer who gave the engine a good service and to flossy who put up quite a few new lights about the boat, also John of fowey fluid power who overhauled the crane.

We always enjoy our stay at the yard as it is a very attractive place to visit, you would never beleive a yard was down there but they do a lot of work at Tom's re-fitting most of the boats in the southwest. But after two weeks of painting we will be glad to get back to sea and catch some fish.

The boat arrived back into Newlyn late tuesday afternoon after a six day trip to the southwest of the scillies. We landed our catch into the lorry for sale on the wednesday's market at Plymouth.

This was the last landing for nearly 3 weeks as we were due up to Tom's boatyard on the Friday morning for our annual refit and paint up, but before we headed up to Polruan we had a lot to do to get the boat ready.

We had to take the nets off and put them on the quay to be repaired, then we gave the boat a really good clean and we had to jet spray all the surfaces off, ready for painting. This took most of wednesday and thursday to do, but by thursday afternoon we were ready so we went home for tea, then came back in to leave in the early hours to catch the tide right to head around the lizard.

I have had a busy week again, we landed last wednesday after a short trip to the grounds off to the southerd. The fishing wasn't to bad but the fish were flighty and moving across the ground quick, which made trying to stop in the best place to fish difficult.

We had quite a bit of work to do on the gear the evening we landing, we had the nets to mend some routine engine jobs and 4splices to put in on our sweeps, which proved to be good practice for later in the week, as I shall explain in a bit.

pictures courtesy of Dave Linkie fishing news

The boat sailed again in the early hours of wednesday morning and as the fishing had been slack on the near grounds, Alec decided to head further to the southwest, to a new piece of ground that we have never fished. This was something we were planning to do after the refit that we are having next week, but with a fine week forecaste Alec took the bull by the horns so to speak and went for it.

Sorry I havn't blogged for so long but I have been away at sea for quite a while. The fishing has been good of late and we have been able to put a few good trips in, as the weather has remained very settled.

We are seeing a good mix of fish with the John dory's turning up in the last few weeks and there is still a nice few monks and lemons on the grounds. The haddock fishing has been steady but not a huge amount so far.

We are also seeing a nice few megs when we are working further to the west but the prices have been poor for the megs as they are mainly exported to spain, and the spanish are not buying fish like they used to due to the recession.

We had an unusual catch last week when we hauled up a giant octopuss, not as big as the ones that nemo had to face but it was pretty large for an octopuss. We only see one or two in a year and the are quite lively things, grabbing hold of anything and everything.

In this picture jim managed to hold it down long enough for us to take a picture, then we put him or her back over the side.

We are also started to see quite a few yatchs pass us by sailing to and throw to the islands, so silly season us upon us as well.The boat is due in later today after a five day trip and we will land our catch for tomorrows market, we will hopefully sail again later for another five day trip, as we are due up to Tom's boat yard at the end of the mounth.

We sailed last tuesday week and we had a short trip to the south so that we could catch a good market again on the Friday. The fishing has been good of late and we knocked up over 100 boxes for our couple of days, we are seeing a nice few lemon sole's now with a few dovers in amongst the catch and the haddocks are coming on stronger now each week.

We had a quick turn around on thursday evening and we headed off to the grounds to the south of the lizzard point, the fishing was good once again with a steady catch of monks with lemons,haddocks,sole's,brills,whiting and a sprinkling of john dorys.

On the Saturday we were joined by a couple of dutch seine net boats who steamed down from the east to fish with us further west. Seine net fishing always fascenates me, as it is a very efficient way to fish if the right fish are on the grounds.

 They start by shooting a dan with an end of thick rope attached then they shoot about 2 miles of rope in an arc, they then turn there vessels 90 degrees to shoot there net, which is attached to another 2miles of rope which they shoot in a matching arc adjasent to the first arc.  When they meet up with the dan which was shot on the origanal rope they then start to haul and tow the rope and the same time. At first they haul slowly as they are wanting to keep the fish between the ropes, but as the net closes they speed up the hauling rate thus driving the fish into the net.

The seine net uses the same principal as we do by using rope to herd the fish, but they rely on more rope to cover  large area, as opposed to trawling where we use the doors to open our nets with less rope but we tow our nets to cover the ground.

The seiners were after red mullets,flat fish and gurnards and this method used by the dutch has proved to work well further east in the channel and in the southern north sea, but this is the furthest west that I have seen them.

We fished well for another 5days and headed back in on tuesday evening, we had another quick turn around and the boat is away at sea again. Alec has the boat away this trip and he is heading west to see if he can find a few dorys as they should be starting to show out to the west this time of year. 

With easter just round the corner we were keen to get a landing in before the last market before the holiday weekend, as usually the prices can be good. Then we were hoping to work over the easter weekend to land middle of next week.

We sailed on friday afternoon after the wind had eased and we headed south to shoot our gear off the lizzard point. It was still quite poor when we shot and we had a bit of a job as the swell was huge and we had to shoot into the weather. We worked away through the night on friday but the fishing wasn't the best as the swell remained heavy from the southwest which was probibly lifting the gear, so this meant we didn't fish as well as we could have.

The weather eased by the morning, but our first daylight haul we picked up a heavy weight and we had to haul our gear. We got the gear to the surface but the weight was in the cod end so we had to heave it over the stern and as it was still quite a swell running and this proved to be quite dangerous.

After great effort we managed to get the weight onboard and it turned out to be a beamers codend and net, which had been dumped on the way in which really pissed us off as it was quite unnecessary.

We had a job to handle the net so I can't imagine how a smaller vessel would cope if they had caught it.

We carried on our trip with some hauls being good and others not so good, the tide was jumping quick so we had a job to keep in the fishing as the fish were very flighty this trip. So after 3days we called that it and headed home in another gale of wind this time from the northwest. We got in and landed our catch on tuesday but we have been in since mending our nets on the quay and other jobs about the boat as the weather has remained poor and the outlook for the easter weekend is not good so I don't think we will sail until next tuesday.

 A rainbow close to the bow.Happy easter everone.