Fine fishing this trip

Fresher trawler Helga María is in port in Reykjavík after a successful trip to Westfjords fishing grounds – although one of the steering jacks malfunctioned during the trip, which affected the autopilot. A new replacement part was sourced in Ísafjörður, but this unexpected setback put the trip back by 20 hours.

‘We went straight to the Hali grounds and started fishing there. Normally there are large, good quality redfish there at this time of the year, and this year is no exception. Apart from that, there was a good amount of saithe. The trip was going well when the steering jack failed, and there was nothing for it but to steer manually into Ísafjörður,’ said skipper Heimir Guðbjörnsson, adding that back in the day he had been more used to steering by hand.

‘Once the repair was done, we headed straight back out to the Hali Grounds. From there we worked south to the Látragrunn area. There was very good cod and a good showing of haddock there. When we were getting too much haddock, we took the option of moving northwards to the shallow bank off Patreksfjörður. We had cod there, as well as some plaice,’ he said, commenting that the green weight of fish for this trip was around 165 tonnes.

Helga María docked early on Monday and is scheduled to sail again tomorrow morning.