‘There has been good fishing over a wide area. There’s certainly less cod on the Westfjords grounds than there has been, but the cod will be back even though they’ve gone elsewhere to search for feed,’ said Eythór Atli Scott, who skippered HB Grandi’s freezer trawler Vigri in its last trip that ended at the weekend.
‘It’s common knowledge that hardly any capelin has been seen off the Westfjords, but there seems to be enough feed there. At any rate, the saithe are happy with what’s there and there has been good fishing for saithe on the Hali grounds and elsewhere all summer,’
The catch was a green weight of 1100 tonnes, and there was one half-landing in Reykjavík during the trip.
‘We sailed on the evening off the 12th of July and started fishing on the Látragrunn area. There was some very good fishing for haddock and we also had some haddock off Deild and Barðagrunn. We shifted from there to the Hali grounds and there was good fishing there for saithe and some cod with the saithe. There’s a lot of herring and other feed fish on the Hali grounds and we even saw a little capelin. That’s what the cod are chasing, and so it seems this is why the cod are to be found mainly off the north coast.’
From the Hali grounds, the next step was the Víkuráll Gully, and some heavy fishing for redfish.
‘The Víkuráll Gully has been really good for golden redfish. Then we had a day on the Hampiðjan Square and trued to find some Greenland halibut, but there wasn’t much to be seen so we went back to the Víkuráll Gully,’ he said.
He commented that there is good fishing all round the coast of Iceland, with a strong showing of cod off the north coast, while there is also cod off the east, along with large amounts of golden redfish and saithe.
