Decent trip – for the time of year

Work started in Reykjavík Yesterday morning to discharge factory trawler Vigri’s catch for the first trip of the year. This was a green weight of roughly 700 tonnes, with a catch value of approximately ISK350 million.

‘I’m satisfied with the results, not least considering the time of year. In January you can expect anything. In fact the weather was not bad for the first part of the trip, but more recently it has been appalling and we’ve twice had to seek shelter from the weather,’ said skipper Árni Gunnólfsson.

He said that the trip started on the Reykjanesgrunn grounds.

‘We started out searching for saithe. This has been difficult to get to grips with over the last few weeks, but with 240 tonnes of saithe for the trip we can’t complain. But we were everywhere this trip,’ he said and added that this took them to grounds off the east coast that are rarely visited by trawlers from Reykjavík.

‘The east coast trawlers fish these grounds regularly and they have been getting cod in areas such as the Seyðisfjörður Deeps. We tried there and didn’t see a lot of cod. This was more mixed fishing, saithe, haddock and cod. In fact, haddock is a headache everywhere and you find it all over. So this was cautious fishing for us, as we didn’t want to get too much haddock.’

Vigri didn’t visit Westfjords grounds after its time off the east coast, but instead headed back to fishing grounds off Reykjanes.

‘We looked for deep redfish in the Skerja Deeps and off Matthildur. We can only be pleased with our deep redfish catch for the trip. We have a hundred tonnes of deep redfish, caught mostly in the Skerja Deeps and off Matthildur, and some from the Little Deeps off the east coast. We saw some silver smelt in the Skerja Deeps, but weren’t specially searching for it, as the plan wasn’t to fish for silver smelt this trip,’ he said, and commented that the trip finished up on the Airstrip grounds south-west of the Snæfellsnes peninsula.

‘We did well there for haddock, saithe, golden redfish and cod,’ Árni Gunnólfsson said.