Cod and haddock in the Arctic, Spitzbergen, Svalbard

[esgeo]

I unexpectedly got to participate in a style of fishing totally new to me about a week ago and wanted to share some stories and pictures from the experience.  While working on my graduate degree in geology over the past 5 years or so, I have somehow finagled my way into a consortium of scientists who work on understanding the basic geology of the Arctic.  I have known for several years that the capstone experience of the consortium was going to be a trip to Svalbard, which is probably the closest "first-world" outpost to the north pole.  The trip ended up happening this year during the first week of September, and involved one day of presentations in a hotel in the town of Longyearbyen on the island of Spitzbergen, followed by a ship based excursion to learn about the geology of Svalbard. Without getting into too much detail, I had set my expectations low for the ship-based part, and was remarkably pleased and surprised by the quality of the whole experience.

First and foremost, I had no expectation of fishing on this trip and accordingly had brought nothing for gear.  At the end of the briefing from the First Officer, who was Icelandic, I jokingly asked when we could go fishing, and he told me that every night we will be on anchor and I could fish then.  Having embarked from Longyearbyen in the mid-morning and having a 3-4 hour steam to get to our first stop, I spent time investigating the possibility of fishing.  A bit forward of midship on the starboard side gunwale, there was a pulley system mounted on a 2 X 4 that had what I estimate to be a spool of 200 lb mono with a three hook gangion and a 8 oz diamond bar like jig with treble hook at the end. Each of the leaders on the gangion had a different color (red, yellow or blue) 4" piece of rubber tubing on something like a 6/0 size hook. The main spool wheel had a handle for turning and a knob to adjust tension so that the line could freespool off the wheel or, when tightened, only turn in one direction. Basically the whole set up was a handline with a crank and a pulley for the line to run over at the end of the 2 X 4.

That evening, after we spent the first day doing our "work", I talked with one of the crew about fishing that night.  He said that we would probably drop anchor around midnight and happily offered everything I would need to fish that evening including an insulated bodysuit, gaff, fillet knife, etc. There was a bit of a language barrier, as he was from Moldova and the only thing I can say in Russian is "I don't speak Russian".  However, the mutual interest in fishing soon had him showing me photos on his laptop of fish that had been caught on the boat, his new grandson, his family, and even his random girlfriends he had been chatting with over the ship's satellite internet connection before I darkened his door... As per fishing, the instructions were pretty simple.  Lower the line down and then use your hand to make jigging motions.  When you feel a fish, crank up. He conveyed the point that the fishing might not be good while the sun is down- although it didn't ever get "dark" it was dusky from about 11PM-3AM. We anchored in 120 m of water that evening, but only about 1/2 mile from shoreline. I tried to fish a bit during the dark time, but had no success after about 5 minutes of jigging.

Knowing that breakfast was starting at 8 and we would be "working" by 9, I decided to get up to fish at 3:30.  It was pretty cool, probably about 35 degrees F out, with a little breeze.  I lowered the line to the bottom and started jigging, and pretty soon felt a little weight on the line.  I used the crank to start pulling up, but each time the weight on the line disappeared as I was pulling up.  I imagined that maybe I was just snagging some kelp on the bottom, or that maybe the fish just had really soft mouths and I was ripping the hook out.  After about the 3rd lost fish(?), I decided to handline in the 120 m of mono once I felt a fish was on and just stack it on the deck.  Sure enough, the bottom rubber tubing jig (blue) had a 2-3 lb haddock on it.  Excitedly, I got the fish over the rail and went to put the line back in.  Of course, I had made a huge birds nest with the mono on the deck and ended up with an hour long project untangling that eventually just led to me cutting and resplicing.  However, during this futile process I had the lures in the water and ended up hooking and landing another 3 or 4 fish while trying to work out the knots.  Finally, after cutting and retying, I was able to just fish with the crank, but reeling very slowly as to not lose the fish during retrieval. It generally took about a minute to get the line to the bottom, 30 seconds to hook up and 5 minutes to retrieve the fish.  By 5:30 AM I had about 10 fish (about half cod, half haddock) on the deck and had lost a couple more pulling them the final 20' out of the water and over the rail. Most hookups were single fish with maybe two doubles.  I went to work filleting, which was a miserably cold experience for the hands, but was happy to know our entire party would be having fresh fish that evening on account of my fun.

After hearing about catching fish that morning, several of the other folks on the boat were interested in fishing at the next anchorage.  However we anchored in a glacial bay that evening and despite it still being light out, tried to fish for about a half hour with no success.  I made up some excuse as to why there were no fish in this location and decided to sleep through the night this night.  The next afternoon, as we were shuttling by dinghy back to the ship after our day of fieldwork, one of the local guides told me that the captain had caught 40 big cod that day in an hours time where the ship was anchored.  Not trying to make this story sound too ridiculous here, but the ship also had a wood-fired hot tub that had been heated up that day, so soaking in the tub with a beer in hand while staring at a glacier was my immediate goal for the afternoon.  After accomplishing that goal, the hot tub become successively more crowded, and I learned that we would not be pulling anchor until midnight.  A quick assessment of how much wood remained ensured me that we would have a hot hot tub for at least another 6 hours or more, so I decided I should get another round of fishing in while I was there. As I got out to go fish, my friend Jing said she wanted to fish as well, so I agreed to help her try to catch some fish. 

Here were were fishing in about 50 m of water depth, so the process of getting the lures down and up took about half as much time.  However, the fish here were fully on the munch compared with the previous morning.  After about 2-3 minutes of jigging with no success, Jing started yelling at me that she had something.  I started trying to give her instructions about setting the line on the pulley, but she was fully locked in and focused on landing what was on the end of her line and just handlining away.  I took the slack and started spooling it back on the reel and eventually we got to a point where she could use the crank.  As we start to see color, I noticed she had a double hook up, and as we got those two up, saw that she had been bit on all four lures! Two of the four fish came off in the process of getting them over the rail, and I tossed the smaller of the remaining two back in the water, with the intent of getting a photo of her with the larger one and then turning it loose.  Immediately one of the crew came over to me and asked me why I threw the fish back, as they still had plenty of room in the freezer and were headed back to the mainland after we disembarked and would be happy to have more fish.  I apologized and gladly told them we would get them some more fish for the freezer.  We fished another six or seven drops (actually Jing fished and I cleaned), most of the time hooking up near the bottom on the drop in, ending up with another 15 or so, getting at least one more quad hook up and several triples, with the biggest fish probably running 15-18 lbs. After my cleaning was done, the night blurred into a progression of dinner, single malt, hot tubbing and beer while underway back to port.  All in all a pretty unforgettable experience!

(Sorry about the photos needing rotation, I will try to figure that out after I post.)

     

[Tightlines667]

Thanks for sharing! 

Great report.  That sounds like a fun, exotic trip.  Also sounds like you have a great job, and you were definately in the right place.

[Alto Mare]

Thanks for the report Asgeo, looks like you had a great time. Interesting reel, I would love to give that a shot one day.
Thanks for sharing!

Sal

[Newell Nut]

Great looking trip and here we are worrying over graphite, S glass, E glass and many combinations of them. You have the perfect flex rod for putting meat in the cooler.

[Keta]

Nice, thanks.

[Steve-O]

Great report and nice catches! Thanks for sharing with us.

[esgeo]

Thanks for the comments and glad all y'all enjoyed the report!  Now I think I can safely say I've caught some fish with a type of saltwater fishing reel that Alan has never worked on!

[theswimmer]

Great report,
looks like good food!

[Dominick]

Hey great job.  Hot tubbing and fishing.  Living large Esgeo.  Dominick

[lawaia]

What fun - catching fish and hot tubbing with a pretty girls!  That rig looks like a slightly more modern version of the old knuckle busting bottom rigs used out here in Hawaii in the old days.  Did it have any kind of rudimentary drag or did you have to just hold the spool to slow the fish down?  Thanks for posting.

[esgeo]

What fun - catching fish and hot tubbing with a pretty girls!  That rig looks like a slightly more modern version of the old knuckle busting bottom rigs used out here in Hawaii in the old days.  Did it have any kind of rudimentary drag or did you have to just hold the spool to slow the fish down?  Thanks for posting.

Aloha Lawaia, the reel had a screw-in tensioner knob in the center that could act as a drag. However, the fish just were like wet rags once they were hooked.  Basically as I was jigging, it would just feel like I snagged the bottom. When I was bringing them up by hand, they never really pulled any line from me.  But while cranking, if the tensioner was set too loose, the reel would be able to reverse with the weight on the end of the line. As for actual drag force, it went from no tension to max over just a few degrees of tightening the knob.  I'm sure you could somehow modify with a custom drag stack though!

As a bonus, here's one more picture of Jing with one of her fish with the tub in the distant background! 

[Dominick]

Had to rub it in huh?     Just had to show the model sitting on the edge of the hot tub.     Some guys just know how to live.  I'm jealous.  Dominick

[esgeo]

Had to rub it in huh?     Just had to show the model sitting on the edge of the hot tub.     Some guys just know how to live.  I'm jealous.  Dominick

What's that line? Without photos it didn't happen? I had to pinch myself a few time too!

[whalebreath]

Post-of-the-Month!  

[bluefish69]

DOMinick = Dirty Old Man

Mike