Longlining ( or is it shortlining?)
Longlining involves using lines sometimes many miles long, and with thousands of baited hooks. It may be feasible to use this method from a sail boat, but it would take quite a commitment in materials and equipment. It needs to be very well organised to be able to bait hooks as the line goes over the back of the boat - a careless moment could easily have serious consequences. Retrieving the line would need an electric line hauler, and this would in turn need a generator.
So, I've tried what might more accurately be called short-lining. Using lines 100 metres long, with a snood (branch line with a hook) every 5-10 metres. Rather than setting these lines along the bottom as I've sailed, I've set them while at anchor near a wreck, or over some reefs. Here's the setup I used:
Longlines set while at anchor.
The two vertical lines shown from the ends of the boat are called droplines. I had four, one from each corner of the boat. The boat's width, 6 metres, again coming in handy.
The line streaming out the back consists of a large float and a line with a weight on it, followed by a longline with a snood every 10 metres. Once anchored, it was very easy to drop the float and weight over the stern, and then let the tide pull that away from the boat. Attaching bait to the snoods as the line ran out was straight-forward, as the line doesn't pull hard and so is easy to cleat off if we ran out of bait. Fishing for bait was the weak point of this setup, so clearly we need to install a bait tank so that we catch the bait over shallow banks where they are plentiful and use them over the banks and wrecks where our target fish are. The boat having two sterns 6 metres apart made it simple to stream two of these lines. In theory, it should be easy to attach more buoys and weights further along the longline to keep the hooks from catching the bottom, but I haven't snagged the bottom yet, and I haven't tried adding more of these vertical lines.
So how did it go? Promising.... The limitation was a lack of bait. We caught a few large pollack, and retrieving all the lines was straightforward. However, most of the hooks came back with just the head of the bait fish left on (small mackerel). This was a puzzle at first. What could be eating the fish and so carefully avoiding the hook? We suspected dolphins at first, but we hadn't seen any around the boat. Not until we were on our way home did I suspect cuttlefish or squid. My suspicions were confirmed on unloading at Brixham - the fish market was stacked up with boxes and boxes of squid, with black ink all over the dock.
When I found out how much a box of squid was fetching at the market, I went out and bought some squid lures. I also made a large reflector that can be fitted over a paraffin pressure lamp so that we could try fishing at night with a light held over the water, as I've seen off the coast of Portugal. Catching squid should be straight-forward, jigging the lures from the fishing platform at night, with a light shining into the water to draw the squid up. Sounds like a pleasant night's work at the end of the summer. However, we didn't get to try it out yet.
Squid numbers increase throughout the summer. So early in the year, I expect to be much more successful with my longlines, catching pollack, cod, ling and bass. When my bait starts being chewed off, I can switch to squid fishing.
Squid ink is messy though, and it will stain the whole of the fishing platform, the cockpit and the fish boxes. Googling removing squid ink gives me a recipe for removing the ink: hydrogen peroxide, peanut butter and washing up liquid. Looks like I need to experiment with cleaning methods before I go for the squid!