THE ULTIMATE ANGLING BUCKET LIST

was emptied, carried to us by scantily clad viking women slapped on the backsides by viking men who
kept telling them they hadn't raped anybody yet all day.
Then it was time for the meal with its raw fish platter starter. This was a wooden board with various
offerings like dried cod and smoked salmon scattered around its edge, plus a small white cube of
something in the middle with an Icelandic flag stuck in it. Obviously, then, the centre piece of the meal.
As if dried cod, which looked like wood shavings and had to be reconstituted with saliva wasn't bad
enough, the mysterious cube turned out to be a piece cut from a greenland shark, a species so toxic to
the human palate it has to be buried in the tundra for twelve weeks to allow bacteria to break down the
toxins before it can be eaten raw.
I can and will eat pretty much anything, but still it took me several attempts at swallowing to finally get
my piece to stay down. Then I was asked what I thought of it. One of those dreadful do I or don't I
moments. Tell the truth and you risk offending your host, but say you liked it and you risk getting
another lump.
The following morning it was howling from the west and lashing down with rain. Consequently, only
four of us fished that day. Dave, myself, and two chaps from Norway.
The boat was a small commercial plodder fitted with hurdy gurdy auto-jiggers which the skipper edged
along the sheltered shore of a headland right up to the point where huge rollers were starting to show
around the exposed tip. He then put us on a long slow drift progressively back towards base.
It was uncomfortable to put it mildly. When we moved, waves were coming in over the wheelhouse
roof, and when we fished we got lashed with rain. But when we hit bottom with a range of pirks and
hokkai type rigs, you just simply couldn't go wrong.
This time we caught loads of cod, a good proportion of them
going well into double figures, with the best pushing up
towards twenty pounds. Catfish, coalfish and haddock too.
The skipper was dashing from one side to the other with a
sort of gaff which looked like a lump of wood with a large
straight nail knocked through the end of it which he impaled
into the fish’s skull. He was very good at it. Obviously he'd
had years of practise.
Unfortunately, I hadn't, and sods law, when I picked a spare
one up to help out, the fish I was confronted with was a
halibut which I promptly knocked off the hook and sent
back on it's way. The only halibut we'd seen all trip.
Fortunately, its Norwegian captor didn't seem too fussed as
we proceeded to fill the boat.
When it was over, the others met us in at the harbour and
were gob smacked. We were just cold, weary, and very wet.
Time for a quick shower, load all the wet gear into our suit
cases, grab a bite to eat, then back up in the air taking off in
one of the worst cross winds I've ever experienced for the
two hour flight back to Heathrow.
Dave Devine, Keflavik Cod brace
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