I had joined the boat for one day's midwater trawling just weeks after the new and gleaming vessel had been launched from a shipyard in Falmouth.Her skipper and owner, Dave Hurford, had made a substantial investment to jump ahead from his previous boat, Sarah Jayne, and began by single-boat trawling for sprats.

There is always a "mix" when midwater fishing, a term used by fishermen as a counting measure to discover the proportion of various species like pilchard, herring, sprats, anchovy and so on in each haul.

Normally skippers are successful if they find an almost 100 per cent mix of the species they target. Anchovy found around South West shores have rarely been a clean mix, and on the day that I saw three substantial hauls of sprat there were only enough anchovy from which to get a "fry".

Three years ago Scottish trawlerman Brian Tait, whose two medium-sized trawlers had arrived at Plymouth to have a go at catching bass, was faced with a barrage of pressure from the green movement for his tiny by-catch of dolphins.

The Press went into overdrive and ignored the fact that such bass were essential to the yearly takings auctioned at Plymouth market and largely turned its guns away from the main culprits, French bass pair-trawlers that were busily working nearby and catching hundreds of dolphins each year. Brian had simply had enough; he and his crewmen hauled a bass net back aboard the Ocean Crest that later began its steam back to Fraserburgh.

However, he had seen a fair amount of anchovy in his bass net, albeit that the cod-end mesh-size was far too large to be used on a directed fishery for anchovy. He came back with the right net, and got a successful result.

Armed with help from local merchants, he developed a "fresh" market to Spain by the technique of fast, chilled transport where the freshness was kept with slush ice packing.

The price of anchovy dwarfed that of bass and I was asked to keep quiet as the French were hovering nearby. A couple of months ago I warmed to see high prices paid for good hauls of anchovy. Several skippers at Brixham and Plymouth who are true "midwater men" have cashed in on what is a most irregular fishery.

It isn't a Devon-only fishery and several Cornish sardine ring netters from Newlyn are doing well, I hear.

On Friday I spoke to Jim Portus, leader of the South Western Fish Producers, Organisation, who said: "The anchovy hauls are a very unexpected bonus and I must stress that press claims of prices over £2,000 a ton are not exactly right and a realistic average price is £1,500 a ton - even as low as £900 a ton on occasions was paid.

"There's a lot of speculation on why those fish are here, global warming being a favourite, but I don't think that is the reason.

"In the north Atlantic there is a known change in seawater motion called the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO), which doesn't have a 12-month cycle but one of several or tens of years, and the exact cycle cannot yet be accurately predicted. I think the NAO is responsible for the presence of anchovies."

Although it is mostly an export fish, several Westcountry restaurants and outlets are now offering fresh anchovy - don't miss it.

Just lightly fry them and don't worry about gutting the small fish as they stack up oil during the summer to be used in the cooler winter months and at present have no food in their guts. And take it from me: what a taste.

article copyright WESTERN MORNING NEWS

Comments (1)