The boat sailed on the monday 3rd of january for the first trip of the year, they headed off to the grounds to the south of lands end. The fishing was good, with a good run of monks, whittens, haddocks, and cuttles across the grounds.

With the weather turning poor on the thursday night and the prices remaining high after 3days they headed back into land. The weather was poor on the friday so we stopped in and had a few jobs to do aboard the boat. The weather eased in the early hours of saturday and Alec headed out again to try and grab a few days before the weather made poor again later in the week.



Heading back into Newlyn (picture courtesy of David Linkie)

They started off where they had good fishing the trip before and fell in on good fishing again, the fish were heading off to the south so they carried on working heading south to keep on the fish.

Then on sunday just as they were taking the first bag of the secound haul of the day, Alec said he heard a load of shouting, so he rushed out half especting to see someone injured due to all the noise. But to his suprise he found out what all the shouting was about, A Big Haul Of Bass!.

 








So after a minuet of jumping up and down with euphoria they thought that they'd better haul the other bag to see what was in that one. Sure enough more bass in that bag, so they shot back as quick as they could, to see if they could catch some more.


They got shot again and got on with handling the catch, the weight of bass for that haul was over 800kgs, which is a very good haul indeed. The fish were also a reaaly good run, with one bass weighing over 6kgs.



It's quite unusual for us to see that amount of bass as we use a bottom trawl which is not the way to target bass which usually swim higher in the water, but we do get the odd box or two most trips. We usually see the bass down the stocking just as we haul, we reckon that as we haul our nets we catch the odd one as we pull our nets to the surface.


So after 4hours towing they went to haul again hoping for something simalar, but this time there was only 30-40kgs, so it was back to business as usual and was just a lucky strike but it was very welcome.



They pushed on through til wednesday morning, and with the weather being poor(ssw6-8 moost of the time) the swell was building all the time and with the fishing being so good they actualy ran out of ice, so they headed off in.


They landed there catch onto thursdays market and the prices were still not bad, the bass being a good run fetched a really good price as well, so we were all delighted to get off to a good start for the first week of the year