Gone Fishing

After a great weekend meeting new people and generally spending a lot of time on the sauce, I decided to unwind on Monday night and took a mooch down to the Harbour with my fishing rod.

Having no bait and no idea of what kind of fish were down there, I though I would give the lures in my fishing box a try.I decided to use one of my lures that the lake Trout don't seem to find too appealing, 'Dirty Harry' is his name. No seriously, thats what written down the side of him. Anyway I thought if the fresh water fish don't like him, maybe the salties would.

I then spent the next hour dragging in seaweed and trying to get a hooked up Harry off rocks.

Then, just when I was considering the merits of Kelp farming, I got a bite.


As you can see it was a real monster. Considering the whole lure / fish size ratio, I am not sure if this fish was incredibly hungry or was actually trying to mate with Harry or something.

If anyone has any idea's what kind of fish this is, I would love to know.

Winter is on its way

The nights are started to draw in now (we got some darkness back about two months ago) and everyones talking about winter being on its way. I have already survived one winter in Iceland so I am not too worried about this one.



It does mean that we are getting some beautiful sunsets right now. The pictures below were taken a few days ago when I went Sea fishing.

I only caught a little Ysa (Haddock), he wasn't big enough for the pot and so got thrown back.

A Stickless place

One of the unexpected downsides of going for a walk in the countryside is the danger of being attacked by birds. Growing up in a town I am used to animals being scared of people and not it being the other way round.

During this summer I was in the West fjords doing a bit of camping.The weather was so nice and the scenery so beautiful I decided I would go out on my own for a walk. It was not long before I was attacked by angry mob of Arctic Terns, they dive bombed me and tried to go for my head. I had to beat a hasty retreat. Kria is the Icelandic name for these birds and I realised why they are called this, "Kria" is exactly the sound they make when they attack.

They say that if you hold a stick above your head the Terns will attack the top of the stick, as they always go for the highest part of you. With this in mind I looked about desperately for a long stick, then it dawned on me that the chances of find one were quite low, as this was Iceland, a place is devoid of Tree's.

I ran along a dirt track away from the long grass where I assumed the Terns were nesting and they quickly lost interest in me. I kept a watchful eye out for them for a while but quickly became distracted when I came across a small river and a bridge. I crossed the bridge and started walking by the river bank on the other side. I had been told that there were Salmon in this river and so I was busy peering into the water looking for fish when the Kria came back for round two.

Then whilst I was fending off this second attack from above, two Oyster catchers decided they would fly out of the reeds and have a go at me as well, coming in at the side at high speed at about waist height.

I decided after this second incident to cut my walk short and headed back. Some sort of head protection is probably in order next time I think, or maybe a Stick.