Holy Mackerel! and cod!

Maybe you guessed from the title, but I went fishing this weekend, twice, and with great success.

Harvey and Angelika were back from their hiking holiday and we had some sunny breaks.

The weather had been pretty rainy and windy last week, but on Saturday evening, the weather cleared up a bit and we decided to go fishing.

We did not go very far from Skulsfjord, and went near a small island in a fjord.  One one side of the island the ground below drops quite quickly and we thought we'd try fishing along the drop as our boat drifted over it.

I cannot remember the last time I went fishing, but it has been awhile, and it has been much longer since I have actually caught something, actually for all I know, I never have. So maybe it was beginners luck, or maybe just Harvey's expertly chosen location but we brought up 15kg of fish, mostly cod.  Harvey was fishing shallow with a rod, and I wish fishing near the bottom with a line with multiple hooks on it.

After just a few minutes, I had a bite, and up came this cod.  I was pretty excited! OKAY! Great!, but Harvey wanted his freezer filled so back to work I went.

My first fish and cod!

 A couple minutes later (at most) I had another bite, and it felt much heavier and stronger...I was excited, was it a much bigger cod, or something else..

Turns out it was just 3 cod, just 3.  SWEET! Okay, well if it keeps going like this, maybe we will fill Harvey's freezer, but surely it can't, it must just be beginners luck I thought.

Just a couple minutes later....note there are three!!, that's right 3!!! fish.

A little more time and more fish. Man this is my kind of fishing.  I do distinctly remember fishing once for hours and hours on a lake and not catching a thing, but this, this I like.

After just a couple hours we had 8 cod, and 3 coal fish, about 15kg (including heads but no guts).
Harvey really did not get much chance to fish, as he was right away gutting and cleaning the fish a bit. I have no idea how to do this but it seems that you make an slice behind the gills and then split open the underside and then remove the guts (feel free to inform me if I am wrong).

The final haul

We decided that we had enough for one night, it was beginning to rain a bit and it was 9pm and we had not had dinner yet.  We arrived in Skulsfjord and the weather was nice, cloudy but no rain here, we anchored the boat and started loading into the dingy.  In about 30seconds the weather changed, lots of rain and wind, waves, We sheltered in the boat for a bit, as we would not really be able to paddle the dingy to shore in the wind and waves.
After a few minutes there was a lull and we went for it and made it to shore without problems.  Was pretty amazing (and a little stressful) to see how fast the weather can change on you.

After getting back, Harvey turned the kitchen into a slaughter house and we put away the fish.  I had the fun task of splitting the heads into smaller pieces so that Yukon (the dog) can have them.  This would not have been to bad, except the hatchet I had was a bit dull, okay actually it was really dull. But with a knife to help out and a bit of force, I managed to cut up the heads, and in the process see parts of a fish I'd never had, and still don't have, any interest in seeing.

On Sunday, the weather was again variable in the morning, windy, rainy, then sunny, then windy and rainy all over again.  However, at about 2pm the weather cleared.  At 5pm we went out fishing again, to a new spot. Again after just 2 to 2.5 hours we caught 15 mackerel.  There must have been a school of them swimming around because only one cast had just one fish, all the others had three or four and I think one cast even had 5 fish on it.

Again, Harvey was kept quite busy cleaning and gutting fish, having time to cast once or twice with a rod before having to work at cleaning full time.  However we came a bit more preparred today so he had a few more buckets to use to help organize and he was much quicker.