One of HB Grandi’s skippers report that there have been huge mackerel volumes in Icelandic waters all summer and they are still there, with both pelagic vessels fishing well off the east coast and coastal boats filling up with mackerel close inshore off the west.
‘It’s clear that there were some huge volumes of mackerel in Icelandic waters this summer,’ said said Guðlaugur Jónsson, skipper of HB Grandi’s pelagic vessel Venus, now alongside to discharge at the company’s Vopnafjörður factory.
‘We can see this from how regularly the marks appear around Hvalbakur and then move north along the east coast before they vanish into the deep water. From what we are hearing, the inshore boats are still doing well on mackerel off the west coast, so the overall amount must have been huge.’
‘Weather conditions have been poor these past few days and that affects the fishing. We had a day of excellent weather and fine fishing with it. There aren’t heavy storms recently, but it seems enough the the surface is moving for the mackerel to be less likely to show themselves,’ he said, adding that as well as mackerel, they have been looking out for Atlanto-Scandian herring.
‘The herring generally keep to shallower water closer to land and they are easier to deal with than mackerel that are moving fast. The normal routine is to follow the marks from Hvalbakur northwards and as soon as they reach the edge of the continental shelf, the fishing starts. As long as there’s mackerel showing up along the east coast, we don’t need to search for them anywhere else. It wouldn’t be a surprise if some of the pelagic fleet were to start fishing to the east in the Herring Loophole before the season comes to an end. I expect the HB Grandi fleet will take at least another two weeks to catch its herring and mackerel quotas, although that could be quicker if the weather stays fine,’ Guðlaugur Jónsson said, adding that the mackerel caught so far have been fine quality with an average weight of over 450 grammes each.
