Daf and I were down this week at Daf's cottage. More of a social occasion but we scheduled a dip at the end of the week - unfortunately by that time, the wind had done it's work and the offshore swell was fearsome with whitecaps as far as we could see.
We'd befriended an old boy during the week who'd given us the location of a "secret" unmarked offshore wreck, South of Pwllheli harbour that he swore was a goldmine of big bass, pollock and massive lobster; it sounded strongly like a fisherman's tale but we noted it down all the same. Although highly skeptical, on Friday, after finding the inshore viz absolutely trashed and with no other real options, we headed out to the location he gave us. Nothing looked positive, no lobster pots and nothing on the sounder, which showed flat a featureless bottom, some test dives produced only empty sand and gravel. After 45 minutes of searching, we gave up and headed for home. Not one minute into our journey and suddenly a large lump appeared on the screen; there she was, sitting in 14 meters of water exactly as described.
After the initial excitement, it soon transpired that the promise of monster bass and pollock was not to be; dive after dive produced nothing but micro-pollock and bait fish. Hoping to save a blank and remembering old lad's promise of big lobbies we went ferreting in the wreckage...
Everywhere we looked were claws and antennae were poking out at us. Not just small lobsters but huge, monstrous lobsters. I know Daf and I have mentioned that we've got some good lobster spots on the Llyn but this was something else. We collected 6 or 7 beasts of various sizes and returned to the boat to assess... The photos and video don't do them justice at all.
This is the biggest lobster we've ever seen, the claws were considerably bigger than my hand.
After consideration, we had to send the big ones back to the deep, they were just too impressive to take home. Who knows how old they were.
Actually, we kept one big one... After reading lots on here about cooking lobster, we simmered it, along with some small ones very gently in salty water - 7 mins for the big one, 5 mins for the small ones - let them cool and removed the shells, simmered them in butter for about 2 minutes then served them with lemon squeezed on top - I've never loved lobster before but this was amazing.
