Fishing for food - Cod, Halibut, Coalfish and Redfish

I first contacted Thomas on the internet through his outstanding photo blog. I was interested in Thomas because he fishes to live! I asked if he would like to write a short article and here is what he said.

Hello fellow fishermen. My name is Thomas and I live on a small island in northern Norway. I run a photo blog with high quality photos from my region http://blog.thomaslaupstad.com/ .

I have fished all my life and from the age of 12 I started to go out fishing, on the ocean, on my own.

The people living on the coast have a long tradition of making a living from the sea. In the old times everyone was dependent on what they could harvest from the sea, as a way to earn money, but also as the most important source of food.
Nowadays very few people make a living from fishing because sadly everything is centralized and the big companies, with enormous boats, are buying the quotas from the smaller boats. It is really destroying the typical coastal culture in northern Norway and make the population move to cities and to southern Norway where all the jobs are.

But fishing is still important for most people in northern Norway and almost everyone on the coast owns a boat. Buying fish from stores is uncommon if you live in the countryside.

Seasonal fishing

The seasons decide what kind of fishing that can be done. In the middle of the winter the weather is too rough to go out on the sea with a small boat so then you eat the fish you have caught earlier.

I like to start fishing as early as possible and this year was very early with me getting my boat out on the sea in May. It seems like the fish find the shallow waters too cold so I had to fish a depths bellow 100 meters to catch anything. I caught mainly cod, redfish and a few haddocks at the start of the fishing season.
The cod are of very good quality in the winter and we use to hang it for drying.

In the summer large shoals of coalfish (pollock) come into the fjords. It’s very exciting when there are thousands upon thousands of coalfish in a feeding frenzy around your boat. At the same time thousands of seagulls try to get their share of the small fish that the coalfish is hunting.
Coalfish and cod are the main fish species that I catch in the summer along with the odd wolffish and atlantic halibut.
Late in the summer I use to salt some cod and freeze it for food in the winter. I also make fillets of coalfish, cod and other fish species to fill the freezer.

In the autumn shoals of herring comes into the fjords and I set nets to catch them. Waking up early on an autumn day to drag my nets is very relaxing and exciting at the same time.
I use herring salted fresh or fried. Salted herring can be stored for a long time and can also be used for pickled herring.
Herring is also an excellent bait and I use it to catch Atlantic halibut and red fish.

Methods I use for fishing
I mainly use my good old sea fishing rod with a Penn fishing reel that I have been using for the past 13 years.
For depths below 100 meters I usually use a “juksa”. Juksa is a fishing wheel that has long traditions here. My “juksa wheel” was made by my grandpa 30-40 years ago and it still works like a charm.
As I have mentioned before I use nets to catch herring and on a rare occasion I use nets to catch flatfish.
If I have good amounts of bait I sometimes set bottom-long-lines. I try to target Atlantic halibut, but you can get all sorts of fish.

There are companies offering fishing for tourists around here so you are welcome to try my fishing grounds as long as you leave the biggest fish to me

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2. Mackerel
3. Bait fish in Porthleven
4. Fishing !
5. Rag worm or Lug Worm