Crystal Sea Trawling Blog

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.

It has paid off well and Al and the crew have had a good week with a really good shot of fish and some lovelly big megs onboard, and a nice bit of prime fish, such as monk tails, dory's, and some good sized haddocks. He is well off to the southwest out in what is usually beamer teritory.

I have had a trip off this week and after my 3week stint I was glad of a break, I have had a good week as well, as my Dad and I went to glasgow on thursday, so we could attend the annual fishing show.

We got to the show on friday and we had a great time looking at all the modern equipment and catching up with old friends, the show is just like royal cornwall agricultural show, but for fisherman. I havn't been for 15years and I really enjoyed myself, I was really impressed with the modern computer programmes that the Ormtec stand had, one of the computers had an oceangraphic simulater showing warm to cold tidal currents and how it could help predict where to fish(really impressive)

Later that day they had a competition on for fisherman of the year and I was asked If I would like to join in.

The event was organised by a company called crew2crew who have a really good website which helps old shipmates contact each other and much more and it was  in aid of the fishermans mission, so always willing to help the mission, which does so much work to help fisherman and their families, I said yes. 

I was up against 3 other contestants, we had to first mend a net, then put in a six strand splice, answer a nauticle question and finally don a lifejacket correctly.

 It was a lot harder than it looked and I have to admit I was shaking like a leaf when I was mending, I made a mistake as I turned the net and picked up a sideknot on the other side. So as I started the splice I was a minuete behind, but as I said earlier I had a few splices to do when the boat was in last so I was in good practice.

The leader was John T who works the ocean venture with his Dad also, John Buchan as seen on the TV series trawlerman, I managed to catch him up and we were neck and neck, we had to don our lifejackets which neither of us had practiced for some time but I managed to just beat him to the finish.

 That was friday's semi final, but it was a competion held over 3days with a finalist from each day entered into saturdays grand final. As it was so close between John T and I, it was decided that john would also be in the final.

So just after dinner on saturday the final started there was four of us in total and all of the contestants were really exsperienced fisherman, so I knew it would be a tough competion. We had the same to do as the day before but the first two to don the lifejacket went into a sudden death question round, with the winner being able to answer the decider question first.

Once again I was nervous and this time the pace in the mending was unbeleivable, John finished his mending first, but this time I never made a mistake and I was right on his heels, with the other contestants following behind closely, I just managed finish my splice first, then answered the question and as I was doning the lifejacket John was right with me.

It was literally a photo finsh as we had to raise our hands once we were done, but I have to admit this time as my hands were going up John t already had his straight up in the air. This meant he chose the question sheet and if he got the decider he would win, so the pressure was on.

The questions were pretty tough and on my last question( how many litres of water a carried per man in a liferaft) I got it wrong and John T was the worthy winner.

Pictures courtesy of Dave Linkie fishing news

We had a great time and it was all in aid of the fishermans mission which is a great charity, many of the exhibitors gave genrously to the prize fund and the cash prize was a £1000 pounds and a trip to the Faroes to enter the world competition and many other fishing equipment prizes. John very kindly donated half of the money to the mission, which was a really nice thing to do.

So we arrived home later on saturday exhausted but we had a great time at the show, it was good to see all the exhibits and even better to catch up with people we havn't seen for a long time.

The boat is due in tomorrow and then we are laying up for 2weeks as we are heading up to Tom's boatyard at Polruan for a paint up and a refit.