Crystal Sea Trawling Blog

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 fishingstarted off not to bad with a bit of monk and some nice flats but by later on wednesday the swell was huge and this effected the fishing quite alot. So I steamed east for an hour and shot and towed east up towards the lizard, the fishing started to improve and we were seeing a few cuttles a nice bit of squid and a good bit of prime.

Meanwhile off the coasts of France and Spain they were getting a battering, with winds reaching storm force 10 and 11, and we were lucky as sitting in the middle of the lows we had very little wind but just a huge swell to contend with. Usualy this sort of weather sits over the top of Scotland or Faroes and we have a run of westerly winds, but with the jet stream being so far south, it is the Iberian peninsula that is having our normal winter's weather.

We arrived back into Newlyn on friday to land our catch, as the wind had gone out to the west and we had a gale of wind. We had plenty of jobs to do as we have been non stop the last few weeks. We mended our nets up and had a good clean up, we had some boards to replace down the fishroom and an oil change to do as well.

The forecast was poor for today so we are hoping to head out again on monday, after we have had a well earned break, the fish will be sold at PTA on monday morning.

There has been plenty of large palagic boat activity down our way

 this year with Scottish, Irish and Dutch vessels passing us going to and throw to the grounds to the south and west of Ireland. The western Endevour passed really close one Morning I got some good shots of her as she passed,

il try to put them on the Blog.