Longlining company Mustad Longline reports that things are going well for the 13m longliner ‘Bolga’.
The vessel operates on the north-west coast of Norway, and Per Øyvind Swensen from Bolga in Helgeland has spent approximately €200,000 on automatic longline equipment, the Mustad SelectFish™ System, for his boat. Although this is a large investment, he has reported that the fishing is good, and expenses are low.
Instead of running traditional longlining, Mr Swensen goes to sea with a drum of 10,000m of line, magazines with a total of 8,000 hooks and enough bait. There are three men on board, and besides the skipper steering the boat, one man is busy feeding bait and the third handling the magazines of hooks and watching the setting unit. The snooded hooks snaps on the line automatically, the baitfish is cut into pieces and attached to the hook seconds before it goes overboard.
Bolga - built by Icelandic company Seigur last summer - was the first newbuild that took this equipment into use after three other vessels had been on trial for a longer period. Bolga is the smallest of the trialed boats - the other three are more than 16m and slightly older vessels that combine the line concept with either nets or seines.
In the autumn of last year Mr Swensen and his crew fished haddock and pollock on home waters, and landed about 300t. Now Bolga is fishing cod outside of Røst. The fishery varies, but the system onboard is working well.
