Saithe chasing capelin

‘Fishing has been good all through the autumn and weather conditions have been fine. There were two deep depressions that passed over the Westfjords during the last trip, but we escaped the worst of it. The first time we were on the south-west grounds and as the second one passed over, we were finishing the trip and were on the Straumnes Bank where things weren’t so rough,” said Heimir Guðbjörnsson, skipper of HB Grandi’s trawler Helga María.

The trawler docked in Reykjavík on Sunday after a successful trip with a catch totalling 140 tonnes.’

We started on the Mountains south-west of Reykjanes. There was plenty of golden redfish there but practically no saithe. We shifted northwards to the Djúpkrók area and from there to the Thveráll Gully and after that to the Hali grounds where we spent most of the trip. The catch was good, mostly cod with some saithe. There had been some good fishing on saithe east of the Djúpkrók area a few days earlier but it had more or less disappeared by the time we were there. The saithe have been chasing capelin, and followed it out of the usual fishing grounds,’ he said and added that samples show that the saithe  caught off the west coast have been feeding heavily on capelin.

We escaped the worst of the storm that passed over at the weekend. By then we were already south of Straumnes where we finished the trip with some cod and a couple of tubs of plaice,’ Heimir Guðbjörnsson said.