HB Grandi, one of the country's main pelagic fishing companies said a total of 11,250 tonnes of herring butterfly fillets have been produced at its Vopnafjördur factory this year, slightly down on last year's excellent 12,700 tonne production.

The season began way back in early June when the factory began processing mackerel and Atlanto-Scandian herring. Production of Icelandic summer-spawning herring began at the beginning of November  and lasted throughout the month.

According to marketing manager Svavar Svavarsson, the quality of the herring has been excellent. The pelagic vessels have only been to sea for short trips, as for most of the season the fishing grounds have been within close range of Vopnafjördur.

He said: "Sales have been going well. There is a strong demand and prices have risen since last year. All of this year’s production has already been allocated and we expect to deliver the last few tonnes in the next two to three weeks."

Meanwhile, after a sluggish start the capelin fishing season is starting to pick up for HB Grandi. Trausti Egilsson, skipper of the company's factory trawler Örfirisey RE, said: "We’ve been on the Hali grounds the last few days and conditions here are excellent. There is a lot of capelin here, so the fish is in good condition and unusually big. For example, the saithe we had the other day were that big that we had to hand fillet around half of it that was too big for the filleting machines."

However, the weather  has been playing havoc with fishing recently and as he spoke his ship was heading for a lee in the Ísafjördur Deep to sit out a storm.

On fishing generally, Trausti Egilsson, said this has been a good year and he said that the natural conditions in the ocean show good growth and distribution of fish stocks.He added: "‘The problem is that haddock isn’t so easy to catch, but everything else is in good shape or better."

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