GOOD FISHING OFF REYKJANES

Wetfish trawler Sturlaugur H Bödvarsson docked in Reykjavík Sunday morning with 120 tonnes of fish after only two and a half days on the fishing grounds. The plan had been to land today, but good fishing meant that the trip was shortened by two days.

Skipper Eiríkur Jónsson is understandably satisfied with the trip, and commented that the fishing had been good this last winter on the days when they have been able to fish between recurring bad weather. We spoke to Eiríkur Jónsson last Thursday when Sturlaugur H Bödvarsson was fishing on the Mountains south and west of Reykjanes. 

‘We started on the Eldey Bank and now we’re on the Mountains. We’ve taken three hauls so far and it looks good. An unusually good amount of saithe has been seen but we’re not on the redfish grounds yet,’ he said on Thursday, but he later commented that from the Mountains, they switched grounds to the redfish areas off Melsekkur.

‘We did well on redfish and after that we had two hauls on the Selvogur Bank where there has been a lot of cod. We tried on the Reykjanes shallows where we had some decent saithe hauls, before we finished the trip on the Hraun grounds to the west of the Mountains. There we had some good fishing on saithe,’ he said, adding that of the 120 tonnes, around a half is redfish and the rest is cod, saithe and haddock.

‘What was a surprise in this trip was how much large, good quality haddock there was on the Mountains. Not all that long ago the average weight for haddock was 1,2 to 1,4 kg, but now we're getting an average of 2 to 25, kg haddock.’

He said that since New Year the weather has been some of the worst that he can remember in his long career at sea.

‘We can’t complain about the fishing but the weather up to the 20th of March has been tiring. You don’t feel it while you’re at sea, but it hits you once you’re ashore. But that’s the way it is. Then you get a day of good weather and you forget all the rest of it and we can at least be satisfied with this trip. There was rough weather one day that we were on redfish but apart from that the weather was fine the whole time,’ Eiríkur Jónsson said.