Crystal Sea Trawling Blog

We have just finished a 5 day trip off to the south of the lizzard point, the fishing was a bit slack this trip. It was a funny old tide with it remaining quite flat for a few days around the top of the spring, which is never any good for the fishing.

But there was a nice bit of squid to be had at times, the squid are getting quite large now, as this is usually the best time of year for catching the squid. The squid will hang on up until christmas time but it normally slacks off after the first good autumn blow, then it moves closer to the shore to spawn, this is when the handliners start to catch them.

Our last night we had a bit of bad luck, we were towing along quite happily, then we strted to slow down, so I went to haul the nets and we had a job to heave the starboard net to the surface. When we eventually got the net to the stern we found out the problem. There were two stones in the cod end, one was a lump of granite about the size of a crab pot but the other was a huge lump of blue elvin, which was about 7feet long by 3feet wide and I can ashore you the winch (which can pull 20tonnes) had a job to heave it up on the stern. We eventually got the bag close enough to cut, and with much releif we sent it back from whence it came.