September 16, 2013 — Mike Crates, a long-serving fish blocksman (filleter/cutter) from Wales, has finally been crowned the British Fish Craft Champion after 41 years of competing in the annual event. To do so, Crates had to enter six of the individual competitions which make up the championship and obtain the highest overall score.
From being junior champion in the early 1970s, Crates has won many of these individual competitions over the years and has been runner up to the overall champion on many occasions. One year, he had only entered five competitions, but was so far ahead of the other contestants that had he entered another competition he would have become champion without even taking part in that event.
Crates, who is 56 years old, has been working with fish since he left school at 15. He was taken on, with no academic qualifications, by John Adams, a past president of the National Federation of Fishmongers (NFF), who owned a fresh fish retail outlet in Penarth in south Wales.
In 1973, Adams took over E Ashton (Fishmongers) Ltd in nearby Cardiff, the capital city of Wales, and Crates went with him. Ashtons, now run by John Adams’s son Jonathan, current president of the NFF, is one of the largest fish retail outlets in the U.K. and sources fish and shellfish from all over the country. It also purchases fresh fish from around the world including Alaska, Norway, Chile, the Seychelles and various Arab countries.
Read the full story at Seafood Source