Friends, fish and a flock of seagulls

I went on a fishing trip a couple of weeks ago with my friends Kjetil, Sture and Torvald. We met in Bergen and drove north for about an hour. After a ride on a ferry we ended up on the island of Fedje located on the west coast of Norway. If you travel due west from Fedje the first place you’ll hit land is the Faroe Island or Iceland.

Early morning at Fedje harbour - going fishing

Pilot boat at Fedje traffic station

Fedje is very close to the approach to the Mongstad Refinery. Mongstad is the main refinery for north sea oil in Norway and there’s a lot of traffic with large ships. These are tough waters and authorities want to keep strict control to avoid disaster. Working the pilot boats is not a job for the faint hearted, these guys will go out in tough weather to pilot the ships safely to harbour.

We arrived Friday evening and Torvald made Sushi for all of us. He had a Sushi Making kit bought from Amazon.com and it worked great! Saturday was grey, rainy and a bit windy, but we got in the boat and went fishing anyway – I didn’t bring my camera though. There were lots of fish in the water and we brought back a selection of pollack, cod, mackerel, saithe and a couple of other species for which Google translate didn’t give me a satisfactory translation. Sture made the most amazing fish soup based on our catch of the day!

Torvald showing the catch of the day!

Sunday was absolutely beautiful! No wind – which is extremely rare at Fedje – and sunny. We got in the boat at went out to catch more fish.

Yours truly in the foreground with Sture and Kjetil

Sture pulling in 3 mackerels

Torvald pulled a "brosme" (don't have English translation)

Captain Torvald

One of the chores that comes with the package on a fishing trip is that you need to clean the fish. We decided to do that on the way back and this attracted a lot of seagulls. I’d just been reading up on how to use my camera and specifically how to take action photos. After tweaking the knobs and wheels on my Canon G10 I started snapping shots of anything moving. Torvald was helpful by throwing the fish leftovers in my direction, so most of the action was pretty close to where I was sitting in the boat.

Cleaning the fish

Seagulls hunting for the leftovers

Seagulls hunting for leftovers

Seagulls hunting for leftovers

Seagulls hunting for leftovers

Seagull at Fedje

Seagulls fighting over leftovers

That’s if from Fedje. It was an amazing trip and we’ll hopefully be doing something similar next year – either at Fedje or maybe somewhere else. Stay tuned … 🙂