Having promised to search for someone offering a genuine ‘slurry’ ice machine I recently had a call from a well known Scottish skipper, James Duthie, who has a small business called Slurry Ice Systems (Peterhead).

There is clearly a wide difference between slush and slurry ice. They are both based on the principle of ice being mixed with water, but slurry ice far surpasses slush ice, I’m told – the latter consists of seawater containing large particles of ice made from fresh water.

Although slurry ice machines until now have been aimed in the UK at much bigger boats, in Iceland small units are fitted to the smaller longline boats, as James is well aware.

I will meet-up with James the next time he heads south of the border and I will keep you posted.

If you and your pals are toying with the idea of investing in a small ice plant I would hold back a while as I think that the small slurry ice machine sounds very interesting.

Now on to other things. Having given a lot of space in this column to line fishing, I was hesitant to feature a new gurdy/stripper/outrigger system until I saw the Riviera Gurdy-Fish-Stripper, designed by Torquay inshore fisherman Clive Baker and made by the South West firm, Riviera Fishing Products.

Clive phoned me and told me how a large part of his yearly income depends on summer line fishing, mostly for mackerel and/or squid, and that, like me, he cannot master the ‘loop’ system used in authentic mackerel hand line fishing.

A plan for him to bring the gear, bolt it onto my boat and try it out was agreed. I saw the recent FN review by David Linkie (11 July) on the new 8.1m Peterhead Trefjar boat Darcie Girl, and on seeing the pictures thought that something like that for smaller boats may be the answer. What a superbly rigged boat she is.

Trolling for fish – particularly mackerel – is also vital down here. Gone are the winter days when you could just steam out from the land, find a shoal, turn broadside to the wind or raise the mizzen and wind away with a traditional gurdy/outrigger/fish-stripper arrangement (although, you can use the new gear for that type of operation).

Our hand line-caught mackerel is now largely a summer fishery, where the true hand liners at St Ives and Newlyn make the looping method look like a work of art, although it is alien to our lads here in Falmouth Bay and beyond.

But in both ‘looping’ and using whatever type of traditional gurdy gear you have, trolling slowly until you hit the fish is essential. The secret then is to go hard over with the tiller to “keep-on” the fish as the only way to keep the day’s profit at a reasonable level.

I use a traditional gurdy system and once hard over, in theory the line should stay on the outward roller, but much of the time it does not.

It’s OK if you have someone else on the tiller (or secondary controls at hand on a bigger boat) to keep the line on the roller by varying the diameter of the circle you are travelling on, but single handed that’s often not possible and the blessed line flips off the roller’s end and you lose valuable time. And, when you get it right, the diameter of the incoming roller isn’t large enough to prevent some of the larger fish from flipping off.

“I can’t do anything about that” may be your first thought, but hang on – here in Cornwall, Devon, Dorset and further east, one large mackerel often means £1! You can’t afford that loss.

What’s needed is a standard gunwale mounted gurdy and outrigger, but at the fish stripper a totally new design, so that it doesn’t matter in what direction your boat is travelling, you can wind away and the fish are gently fed to the inner stripper.

“Well, we’ve got it,” answered Clive when I outlined the problem. A few days later he travelled to Falmouth from Torquay and I saw the gear.

On fitting the prototype to my boat I saw how it had been through many changes, but how the ‘fits any boat’ idea has worked. The stripper and its shape may be the answer that many mackerel fishermen are looking for.

The stripper and gurdy are linked together so there’s no need to repeatedly raise the gurdy line to stand between that and the stripper. You can have the wheel on your right or left, it’s no problem to change the arrangement.

The outrigger looks different as well, using two rollers instead of one, and I was keen to see that working too. However, when we got to my boat, the wind was howling and had swung to SSE and there was no chance of leaving the Helford River, but we did have the chance of trolling along the wider parts of the river and I was much impressed. I took the boat around all sorts of angles with the line moving around the U shaped, guide-in funnel and it looked most effective.

Clive told me he now loses very few fish and said: “I had the old traditional system and it was too costly – there were fish flying off and nobody can afford that.”

What impressed me was the stainless steel construction and how the unit can be modified to suit any boat – you don’t have to order a system custom made for just one boat, and fishermen change boats all the time, as we know.

I saw parts of the gear where I thought some items could be made more robust and I said so, but Clive told me that we were putting the prototype through its paces and that many changes have occurred since, a fact confirmed when I saw a lengthy and well presented profile on the gear, distributed on email from its manufacturers, Riviera Fishing Products.

Here’s what they say: “The stripper box is trapezoidal in shape, with a large opening narrowing towards the actual stripper mechanism. The mouth is formed by a large-sectioned stainless steel walled U-tube, thereby creating an easy entry for both line and fish with no protrusions for the hooks to snag on. On entry through the mouth the fish slide onto a downward sloping platform; this together with the U-tube up-stand and enclosed sides prohibit the fish from escaping.

“The stripper mechanism is round walled to stop the snagging of hooks and thereby creating an easier passage between the stripper walls – an 18mm gap. Being open ended, the top of the stripper enables rigging/de-rigging of the line to be much quicker and facilitates hand jigging. The versatility of the unit allows it to be used for either trolling or drifting and can be used on a wide range of size of boat.”

What will be important to many fishermen is that with a simple modification, the system can be used for squid fishing too, so yes, I can see potential, one or many can be fitted to different sized boats. It doesn’t matter which way around you want it, as in ten minutes it can be adapted using just a spanner.

The two drum outrigger does seem to work well, although I need to try the gear in various seas to give a firm opinion.

Following the trials we unbolted the gear, voted to dry-off from the torrential rain at my place with a cup of coffee against doing the same in the pub – well I do have to give the right impression when meeting someone new! Next time Clive it’s the Ferry Boat Inn, they don’t know much about a gurdy but do sell a nice pint.

Clive also explained to me another way of using the gear that eliminates the need for the hooks to travel within the boat, which is a fantastic idea. It’s not new and is not dissimilar to the system on Darcie Girl, but it’s very suited to smaller boats.

The plan is for Clive to bring that arrangement down to Falmouth and I’m keen to see it working and look forward to reporting the idea.

If you want a copy of the manufacturers’ report, email Roger Lean on: rogerlean@btinternet.com

It is a well balanced report, with extensive pictures of the system, which is patented, and Clive is always on hand via the phone to talk ‘fisherman’s talk’.