Judy P's Tickle Trunk

….or got’da git me quota, b’y.

How to make a Newfoundlander smile….just bring on the cod.

My recent visit to Newfoundland happened to overlap with the twice annual “food fishery”. I was keen to give it a try though I have never had a lot of luck with cod jigging. Years ago, it used to be that any time you went out for a day on the water and wanted to have a scoff, you could just drop your jigger overboard and catch a fish to stew up with a bit of brewis on a campfire. Now the Newfoundland and Labrador fishery is heavily regulated. You can about the heads and tails of the tails of it in a brief history of the cod fishery on Wiki.

The heads

and the tails of it.

Up to this point in my stay the weather had been pretty foul but we awoke on day one of the fishery to find the wind favourable though it was forecast to blow later. Pete and I decided to go.

The boat was waiting patiently at the dock and we hopped aboard

and my brother Pete fired up the engine

and we headed across Hall’s Bay

into the sun.

You couldn’t have asked for a prettier morning. We tucked in behind a headland out of the wind and let the boat drift while we dropped our hooks over the side.

The rock in the middle of the shoreline looks at times like a squatting troll and from another angle like a big gummy bear. I love these rugged shores.

This eagle kept a watchful eye on our progress. Wonder if he was paid by the fisheries officers. Not one of my best pictures because I had to zoom and the boat was rocking.

It wasn’t long before Pete had his first codfish.

The first catch of the day. A decent size but, as Pete said, not big enough to be Facebook worthy.

The rule is 5 fish per person aboard the boat with a boat total of fifteen per day. We went out four days and on all but one day got our quota. We seemed to have extraordinary fish karma. Others were fishing away when we arrived, we got our catch and left, and left the others still trying to get their five fish each. Can’t put it down to skill – how much skill is involved in throwing a jigger over the side and tugging away on it till something bites. The only skill came in getting the danged hook out of its mouth. Any kind of fish you caught counted towards your quota no matter what the species. Thankfully we caught all cod but for 2 redfish.

A real pretty fish and good eating too.

This was my biggest catch.

OMC. (Oh My Cod)

and it would have qualified as my Facebook fish were I a Facebook user. Sadly we forgot to get this photograph before we gutted it – it was a nice plump thing with a fat belly full of baby lumpfish before it met the knife.

Overall it was a lot of work and very tiring, especially if we went out in the evening because the fish had to be cleaned, filleted, and packaged after we got in. Lance took charge of filleting so I got off the hook, so to speak.

Evening on the fishing grounds.

What a joy it was to have all the fish you could eat. We enjoyed

pan-fried cod tongues for breakfast

fisherman’s brewis for dinner (lunch to you mainlanders)

and baked stuffed cod for supper, complete with genuine Mount Scio Nfld savoury.

Some good by’s. I am going to have to try and find a way to work it into my schedule again next year.

© Judy Parsons 2015

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note: there seems to be a problem with my comments. Indeed, they have all disappeared and new ones are not posting. I believe this is a problem with WordPress and I am trying to figure it out.