Fine trip, but plenty of steaming

‘This has been a good trip for us. We’re just ten tonnes short of a full capacity trip, and if we don’t get that today, then we’ll be docking tomorrow,’ said Jóhannes Ellert Eiríksson, skipper of Brim’s fresher trawler Viðey, currently fishing off the south-west of Iceland.

He said that the trip started with patchy fishing, as is nothing unusual, and a lot of time has gone into steaming between areas to search for specific species.

‘It has been a challenge to find saithe this trip, as that’s what everyone is looking for these days. We started fishing off the south coast, and then heard reports of good saithe catches on the Hali grounds off the west coast. We went there, but by the time we arrived the bottom had dropped out of the fishing. We had some cod there and then made our way back south after 24 hours on the Hali grounds,’ he said.

According to this exceptionally experienced skipper, it has become very difficult to avoid those species that can’t be fished.

‘Redfish is as good as a protected species, so nobody dares go into those areas where there’s known to be redfish. So nobody is searching for saithe on the Mountains. The same goes for the Skerja Deeps. That’s where the freezer trawlers fishing for silver smelt go,’ he said, adding that a full trip for Viðey is around 190 tonnes.