Crystal Sea Trawling Blog

We have been working to the south of the wolf rock recently from 6-20miles off, catching cuttles,monk,haddocks,megs.and brills, the fishing was good but it started to slack off as the tide cut from the springs to the neap. I was on watch on thursday afternoon and for about 2hours hundreds of dolphins were swimming around the boat, they were porpoising and diving the sea looked as if it

We got lucky in the early hours of this morning, when towing in an area (that must remain secret!) we came around to take the cod-end and it was full to bursting! We tried lifting it aboard but the bag lifting winch, which can haul 2 tonnes, couldn't heave it over the rail, so in the end we had to attach the bag up through the lifting block to the main winch, which hauls the net from the sea

We hauled early this morning and had a lot of Zulu's in the net. Zulu's are a menace, they are quite a small fish (about the size of a 50p piece), are of no market value and are like rubber which makes them impossible to work with! The real name of the Zulu is Boar fish, but we call them Zulu because you never just get one you get thousands, they also have spear like spikes on

We have been in port over the last few days and we have been busy maintaining the boat. This can't be all done all by ourselves, as the boat also needs a lot of skilled tradesmen to come aboard and do the jobs we are unable to do ourselves. We had hydrolic pipes and fittings that needed replacing and for this John from Fowey Fluid Power came down, we also had Flossy down

We have been getting away with it lightly over the last month or so, now were going to pay for it. The wind has gone into the west and all the fleet is in tied up, as low after low is lining up in the Atlantic to batter us over the next few days. It's not unexpected for the time of year and up until now we have been getting out every day, but a stong blow doesn't do any harm, we will

Alec sailed again on Tuesday he went to the wolf but the squid had taken off. This time of year the squid move from the deeper water to the shore to spawn and this is when the handliners start to see them. It's always the same pattern but some years it happens late october, other years it may be later, this year its the later. So Al did a day at the wolf and headed south through the night

Alec and the crew have managed to push through, even though the weather has still been blowing pretty much non stop, they are due in tonight and have got a good trip onboard. The wind went from the north to the northeast in the last 36hrs, so where their working around the wolf into the bay, they have a welcome'd cut from the land. This make's a huge difference you can litarely look at

We stopped in the harbour yesterday as we had work to do, we fitted a new conveyor belt to our fish handling system we also had some splicing to do and we gave the accomadation a good clean round, as they were giving northeast 6-8 we thought it was a good time to stop. But as it is with easterly wind it only blew about a force 5-6 and as the forecast for today was looking good only 4-

I got in from sea late last night we landed another trip to Plymouth today, the fishing has slacked a little over the top of the tide but it should be better on saturday as the tide cuts again.

Spotlight were down in Newlyn today, doing a story on how the credit crunch is affecting the industry, It's starting to effect the fisherman but its isolated and only just starting 

We steamed off yesterday morning and there was a heavy swell left from the gale the night before, as we approached the runnle stone in the half light around dawn there was a huge swell laping the huge granite cliffs off gwenip head and rolling over the stone. Then between the swells i caught a glimpse of a single light, then  as we got closer i could see that it was a punt and i