Bits + pieces

He likes fishing I like flowers, I planted this mini rock garden earlier this year,

and grew this from a plug plant 

our local pub getting ready to celebrate HRH's jubiliee

Now for some fish stuff : 

Monkfish, somewhat prehistoric in appearance, only the tails are used, unfortunately they are also a favourite food for seals they (the seals) get into the nets and help themselves leaving only the heads which are not saleable, I get text messages saying "I've been Gweeked" meaning the seals won  or "Beat the b******s meaning fishy won! !

Why fly when you can save energy and hitch a ride?!

Meet Jim a.k.a. "Dolphin Man"

 on this occasion he is measuring and logging details of all fish/creatures that were in the nets, other times he will take away everything not saleable i.e. rocks, seaweeds,  etc and analyse them - as our friend Eric says "whatever blows your kilt up" Jim will also help cleaning the nets etc when not doing his sampling.

This odd looking creature is a sunfish, this one was lucky he(she?) went back alive,

another odd looking one this time a gurnard, 

Monty Halls Fisherman's Apprentice

If anyone watched Monty(WorldsMostPatronisingMan)Halls last night, a couple of comments, firstly, it is highly unlikely that tope would fetch £40.00 more like £4.00, secondly the main problems facing inshore fishermen are not discards and quotas(although yes they are an issue) it is weather and tides, thirdly, most fishermen do not have Japanese wives who happen to have contacts in London sushi restaurants who will take the more unpopular fish off their hands, finally (I could go on all day! !) fishermen do not go out fishing in the hope that the Govt will suddenly re open the fisheries, they are informed by post at the beginning of each month of the catch quotas, once it's gone it's gone. OK rant over (for now !) As I'm sure you can imagine this is watched with much gritting of teeth and use of language I won't post on here ! ! 

Herrings + Mackerel

Some boats concentrate on one particular species, Go For It has nets for various species, meaning that once the quota for the prime fish (cod) has been fished or tides are too high for deep sea fishing the nets can be changed and another species targeted, a couple of weeks ago Go For It switched to herrings & mackerel.  These are fished closer into to the bay as the photo above shows.

A bit fiddly getting them out of the nets !

but 8 boxes later it's worth it,

prime mackerel. (and the camera lens has now been cleaned)

Crabs & Lobsters

In addition to the nets we also have 120 pots the aim of which is for them to be filled with huge juicy crabs and lobsters.

The pots are baited with salted herrings and mackerel 'frames'  (the bits left over after the fillets have been taken off) this smells HORRENDOUS but the lobsters & crabs like it ! !

The baited pots are set down near rocky areas - ours are off St Michaels Mount - and left for a couple of days.  The above photo shows undersized brown crabs all of which went back into the sea, also going back are any berried lobsters - females carrying eggs -

Any crabs which look like they may be too small are measured, if they fit into the measure they are too small and go back, this one is only a centimetre to two too small but it goes back 

as does this lobster, it will be another 3 years before this one is big enough to grace the plate, when it will be about 8 years old

this one however is a keeper, they are measured from back of the eye to the ridge at the beginning of the tail.

once sorted the keepers are put in a box of seawater for the journey back to port, on arrival at the mooring they are transferred to a holding pot kept submerged until there is enough to take to W.Harvey the shellfish merchants, then there is a weeks wait until the exciting bit - getting the cheque ! !

conger eels also like the lobster bait and are sometimes an unpleasant surprise when the pots are lifted, as a friend of ours says "they are meaner than a two headed snake" however they can often make for a nice little extra on the market, if not they can always be chopped up and used as bait.

These pictures were of the last hauling of pots, hopefully today's will produce even more.  The nets are out tonight so hopefully there will be a birthday bonus of lots of soles tomorrow ! ! 

Apologies (again)

Apologies again for lack of bloggy business which is mainly down to lack of fishy business (we had a small dinghy called that).

Am composing the next bloggy which will deal with the complex issue of Catch Composition <yawn>

Turbot !

Turbot is the King Of Fish, it will get the most money on the markets and here is a 5.5kg of Turbot, now time to call me bitchy but apparently the photo was taken on one of them "all singing all dancing IPhone thingys" I think my photos are better quality ! !

From boat to Market

Once the nets have been emptied so begins the process of getting the fish ready for selling on the market (in our case Newlyn Cornwall)

Each different species has it's own box, above we have cod (there was some cod quota left), whiting in the box on top, then in no particular order ! some haddocks, pounting, dover soles, lemon soles, witch (another variety of soles) megrims, brill (also known as the poor man's turbot)

Each box is weighed 

Then labelled, noting the species, weight, and most importantly the boat name so they pay the correct boat !

Then iced to keep it as fresh as possible

It's now all ready for the Monday morning market,

A bit of an up and down week this week, no fishing Monday because he had to attend training course on the awareness + prevention of hazzards.

The nets went out Tuesday hoping for nice big flat fish and not cod as the quota is fished for this month, haul of the nets on Wednesday produced a monster turbot weighing in at 3.5kg a couple smaller ones and various flat fish including plaice and the target species Dover Soles, unfortunately there was also a far bit of cod so sadly they have to go back into the sea (they are already dead) crazy but rules are rules and if he was to be boarded by the fish police (they are allowed to board any boat fishing UK waters at any time) and was found to have illegal (called black fish in the trade) fish on board they would start legal proceedings and this could result in the fishing licence being withdrawn/fines/jail or in extreme situations all three.

Thursday was spent cleaning Wednesdays nets and shooting again for hauling Friday, the weather is not looking too good for Saturday so it will probably be a day in the garden - at least I'll get something nice for dinner if he is at home to cook. ! ! 

The wheelhouse,

The tides have been to big for fishing this week and are continuing to build, the 'weight' of the tides always moves the nets somewhat but during Spring Tides the nets move far too much getting twisted around (think duvets covers coming out of a washing machine only several miles longer!!) so Mondays good haul took 2 days    of net sorting.

The plan this morning was to check the lobster/crab pots but a look outside and 7am and it was decided that they could wait for a day or two, so today is a day in the garden (until the rugby)

We have a small greenhouse in which Ken grows mainly tomatoes, cucumbers and chillies, this is last years seedlings.

The seagull appreciate the nasty bits !

New month new quota

January was an exceptionally good month ! The entire cod quota was caught, although the prices on the market dropped towards the end of the month.  Apparently some of the cod were so big could only fit 4 to a box - more boxes have been ordered (Fishwife thinks this could be tempting fete ! - but they do make good under bed storage boxes).  The fish police have slightly reduced the quota for this month but if half is caught it'll still be  good.

The weather hasn't been conducive to fishing for the past couple of days so Fishwife has come home to nice food (even washing up done) and the fire lit, oh and pork pies went back into production.

String 1 of lobster pots being lifted today, and nets out tonight, fingers (fins?) crossed !

Ken guiding the boat onto the mooring,

The commute to work !

St Michaels Mount, the lobster pots are here

Good start to the New Year

Fishing commenced 7th January and was very productive, thankfully no lobster pots were lost during the bad weather late December and some were packed with nice juicy lobsters. Cod was the star of the show following the hauling of nets on 8th January- not quite the entire months quota but a good start none the less.

In fact the week has got better and better,  it has been nice to receive texts saying 'not enough fish boxes' ! !

Today is lobster pots during the day and mackerel fishing once it's dark.

Of course all this fishing does have a down side - Fishwife has to make the evening meal !  this week we have had
Saturday : Sausage casserole and jacket potato
Sunday : Cottage pie (filling made previously by MrFish) with green vegs
Monday : Butternut squash soup (made previously by MrFish)
Tuesday : Filled pasta with tomato sauce (made previously by MrFish)
Wednesday : Roasted chicken thighs with herby potato wedges and salad

Apologies

Well the pork pie production was a success story, and Mr Fish was kind enough to do most of the cooking while I was at work, he even cleaned the kitchen after.  It was nice to receive a phone call from the friend who received the large family sized game pie to say how much they enjoyed it but somewhat surprising that it was only 30 mins after leaving them in the pub ! !