HB Grandi: Mackerel makes a change

HB Grandi's fresher trawlers have been fishing on mackerel to take the 140 tonne quota that each of the three vessels has allocated, and yesterday Ásbjörn RE finished its share of the quota. The fish were caught in three trips and landed iced in boxes to HB Grandi's processing plant in Akranesб reports www.megafishnet.com with reference to HB Grandi.

According to skipper Fridleifur Einarsson, their fishing started last Saturday in the Grindavík Deeps.

‘It took a little while to get to grips with this in the first trip, and after that we had two trips in the Jökull Deeps where everything went smoothly. There seems to be plenty of mackerel south and west of Iceland, but unfortunately not as big and fat as they were this time last year. We had a cold spring and it stayed cold well into the summer, with low sea temperatures and everything happening later than we are used to,' Fridleifur Einarsson said, but admitted that the opportunity to use a pelagic trawl to fish for mackerel is a pleasant change from their usual bottom fishing on saithe and redfish with a by-catch of cod.

‘This is the only time of the year that we get to fish with pelagic gear, and the rest of the time it's just bottom trawling,' he said,, and commented that fishing on groundfish species has been good this year.
Only one of the HB Grandi trawlers, Sturlaugur H Bödvarsson, still has a mackerel quota to catch this year and is expected to start searching for mackerel this weekend.