Fishing is in Johnny Murt's blood. Quite how long his ancestors have been working on the Cornish coastline, nobody seems too sure but Johnny is confident that his great-great-grandfather did, as has every generation since. Coincidently, we were introduced to Johnny by Ross Geach, the seventh-generation farmer behind Padstow Kitchen Garden. The way we at THE PIG see it, if they've been doing it for that long, they're probably pretty good at it.
Johnny remembers that introduction well. He and his brother met our Head Chef at Trevose Golf and Country Club just weeks before THE PIG-at Harlyn Bay was due to open. "THE PIG were looking for a local lobster supplier," recalls Johnny. They reckoned they were looking for around 3o to 40 kilograms of lobster per week - not an enormous amount, but we were glad to help out.
Well, when the hotel opened, I was soon bringing the kitchen 170 kilograms of lobster a day. That's around 250 lobsters. At that time, I can't imagine any restaurant in the country was serving more. We sell a lot to Stein's, but nothing compared to what we take to THE PIG."
Johnny may be able to deliver great volumes of lobster, but he also takes sustainable fishing and marine conservation seriously. In 1998, having fished out of Padstow for 14 years, he moved to the USA to study for a master's degree in Fisheries Conservation. He stayed out there and worked in marine science for the next 10 years before taking a job as a fisheries advisor for the UK government as part of the Joint Nature Conservation Committee.
"I was based in Aberdeen but going all over
Europe presenting government proposals to fishery groups," he says. It was basically two years of schmoozing and visiting lots of beautiful little fishing towns around Europe. But eventually it made me realise I just want to be fishing myself.
It's the same in every port: you see the boats coming in, and you see the family members there on the harbour wall, and that's how it's always been for us in Padstow. My grandfather is always the first person I see waiting on the quay. That was a big draw."
He made the decision to get back in his boat in 2010, and hasn't looked back since. Back in Padstow, he's better placed to safeguard the fishery that has served his family so well. For the past couple of years he's been relentlessly Lobbying to protect local fisheries from overfishing by stopping larger commercial boats from operating within the Inshore Fisheries and Conservation Authority's waters. Progress has been slow and frustrating, but it's a vital cause, and one he's not about to give up on.
Most days Johnny fishes alongside his brother, father, cousin and uncle, albeit in separate single-person boats. In fact, he's recently bought a new one, a small catamaran named Daisy T, that he says makes getting over the Camel Estuary's infamous Doom Bar marginally easier. "When the weather's good and your fishing is good, there isn't a job in the world that can touch it," he adds.
In winter, when the weather's not so good, Johnny catches crabs and says that if anything, he prefers the taste of crab to lobster. "It works well," he says of his seasonal fishing routine. "The lobster season runs from around Valentine's Day to the end of August, at which point the crab season starts to pick up. We use the same pots to catch both, we just switch up the bait. Lobsters prefer very oily fish - mackerel, pilchards or herring - whereas crabs prefer what we call fresh fish', such as dog fish or thornback ray"
His two young sons are, as you might expect, no strangers to seafood. Johnny says the boys currently prefer squid or monkfish to crab and lobster. Is the path written for them in the same way that it was for him? "I'm not sure that my boys will go fishing," he says, less ruefully than one might expect. "I think they'd be chomping at the bit already if it was something they wanted to do. I know I was." And he has simply never lost that passion - much to the advantage of the rest of us locals.
Dig into fresh lobster and Johnny's local catch of the day when you eat with us at here The Lobster Shed, over at THE PIG-at Harlyn Bay! Book a table today.
