Brim : Plenty of Westfjords cod

18.10.2021

Plenty of Westfjords cod

'Everything went very well. We're landing 600 tubs of fish, which is a full fishroom, or a green weight of roughly 180 to 190 tonnes of fish. The weather has been pretty good, apart from one day with some heavy weather,' said Viðey's skipper Jóhannes Ellert Eiríksson.

Viðey docked in Reykjavík last night and is sailing again tomorrow. He said that there would be no point sailing today as the forecast for their fishing grounds is poor for the next 24 hours.

'We have been mostly on the bank off Patreksfjörður and have worked our way all the way north to the Hali grounds. It's the time of year for cod and there's plenty of it on the Westfjords fishing grounds. The changeable weather is our enemy, and in the previous trip we had two and a half days of terrible weather. That was a 400-tub trip, if I recall correctly,' he said, adding that he and the rest of the crew are used to this. The reality is that at this time of the year any kind of weather can be expected.

'I think that apart from tomorrow, there's a reasonable forecast for the week ahead. Forecasting has become much more accurate and it's a rarity if they get it wrong. We take it a week at a time, and stay cautious,' said skipper Jóhannes Ellert Eiríksson, commenting that Brim's other fresher trawlers are working to a similar routine. They expect to be fishing mainly off the Westfjords until catches improve on the south-western grounds, most likely in February next year.