Crystal Sea Trawling Blog

The boat sailed on monday and they are hoping to push through until sunday evening. Alec has the boat away this trip, the weather was good at the start of the trip but it has turned unsettled from the west. The wind has been up and down with sixes and sevens at time's but the fishing isn't to bad, so that helps when its an ucomfortable week at sea.

They have been all over the grounds this week moving around with the tide and they are currently to the south of the scillies, they are seeing a nice bit of monk,lemons,megs, whittens and a few more haddocks are starting to show.

We have been working in amongst the beamers quite a bit recently as they are chasing the monk and sole which swim closer to the coast this time of year, we are also seeing quite a few visiting beamers from Brixham and they have been landing their catches into Newlyn and trucking it to Plymouth for sale.

The netters have been picking away on the wrecks, but the hake netters have had the best of it, with some good catches of hake and lings out to the west.

 The newest arrival to the fleet (Govenek Of Ladram) skipered by Phil mitchel had a really good trip with 240boxes of hake for a seven day trip. We landed into Bryan hoskins lorry with them last sunday, and Phil and the crew were delighted with how the vessel performed and that they had got off to a good start with a prosperous maiden trip.

The Govenek of Ladram was the Regent bird ex fruitful bough and she was up until last year trawling from Fraserbrough, when she was bought by Robin Carter from Exmouth and she underwent a really big refit and conversion into a netter by Macduff shipyards.

She looks a fine ship and Macduff as usuall have done a really good job in converting her and I am sure she will prove to be a good earner for Robin, Phil and the crew.

She is also a sister ship to the Crystal sea being built a few years earlier by macduff, and she is a couple of meters longer, but looks very simalar to the Tranquility.

The fish will be for sale on mndays market, the weather is looking unsettled next week so we may have some broken trips as we try to work in between the exspected gales, at least they are coming from the west.

We have just arrived back in from a five day trip, We have had some good fishing this week, with plenty of lemon sole and dover soles to be had.

We have been working all over this week following the fish as they moved around with the tide and I am glad to see the back of the winter and I am looking foreward to the spring, when the fishing is usually far better for us.

The fresh east

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 and

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

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 winds

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 twin

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&

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

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 the

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 and