Brim: Challenge to find cod

‘In general, we can say that catches have been reasonable. But there’s no getting away from the fact that cod have been a challenge. There have been some good showings of cod, but they tend to be short. In between those we just have to search as widely as we can,’ said Akurey’s skipper Eiríkur Jónsson.

When we spoke to him, he was hauling after Akurey’s first tow of its trip on the bank off the Westfjords. Akurey sailed form Reykjavík on Thursday evening after landing a 130 tonne trip from Westfjords fishing grounds. According to Eiríkur, they are picking up where they left off, and again the aim is to focus first and foremost on cod.

‘I was ashore last trip, but that took them all over, as far east as the Strandagrunn grounds. They finished the trip on redfish in the Víkuráll Gully. Now were on the bank and the fishing looks to be nothing special. Going by the reports we have heard, it looks like a tonne of cod per towing hour is what we can expect to the north and on the Hali grounds, so there’s clearly no heavy fishing going on.’

According to Eiríkur Jónsson, reports of saithe are scarce.

‘There were showings of saithe a few days ago on the Stéllagrunn and Sporðagrunn grounds, but neither of those lasted long. I understand that fishing is pretty slow off the east coast where they have been getting a mix of saithe and haddock. The fishing for cod ended as the herring vanished from those grounds. Here on the Westfjords grounds we haven’t been aware of any capelin, apart from a few capelin in the fish during the last trip. But there wasn’t much of that,’ he said, and added that it’s not a question of if, but when there’s a strong showing of cod again.