Elusive saithe can disappear and then just as suddenly reappear, according to one of HB Grandi’s skippers, now fishing off the Westfjords of Iceland.
Ásbjörn has just started its trip, with some slow fishing even though the trawler did well there on its previous trip in the same area. According to skipper Einar Bjarni Einarsson, so far they have been getting hauls of roughly equal amounts of cod, saithe and redfish, and an ideal trip is around 120 tonnes.
‘We’ve just started fishing and we’re on the Hali grounds. Fishing is quiet for the moment, although we did well here in the last trip and overall it has been a good summer’s fishing,’ he said.
‘We’re normally fishing for three to four days, and there are 17 to 18 hours of steaming time each way to and from the Westfjords grounds. In the last trip we did unusually well and we were docked in Reykjavík last Sunday evening instead of our scheduled landing day on Tuesday morning,’ he said, commenting that HB Grandi’s fresher trawlers have all been fishing off the Westfjords this summer.
‘While there’s redfish off the Westfjords and it’s good quality redfish, we’ll be fishing there instead of off the south-west. It has been a good summer, not least after fishing for saithe improved. Saithe can disappear without warning and then show up again, and what we’re seeing today is a perfect example of that,’ Einar Bjarni Einarsson said.
