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fish in the trade) fish on board they would start legal proceedings and this could result in the fishing licence being withdrawn/fines/jail or in extreme situations all three.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 !