Pleasure fishermen who recall the bountiful days of the sixties and seventies long for the time when they used to go lampuki fishing to the north east and come back with good catches.
Those were times when the lampuka, one of the fiercest predators in the sea, came in shoals from mid-August, making its earliest appearances in north east waters.
But, as former full-time fisherman Ivan Portanier said in an interview, this area is today practically barren of the migratory fish, known as one of the fastest swimmers.
Mr Portanier produces and presents the programme on the fishing industry Bejn Sema u Ilma on Radio Malta (Sundays at 12.15 p.m.)
Lampuki, also known as dolphin fish, or dorado, and bearing the scientific name Coryphaena hippirus, are noted for their incredibly fast growth rate.
They can grow from pinhead-sized dots to three kilograms in about six months. Fish weighing 10 kilos are little more than two years old.
Dolphin fish spawn every six weeks throughout the year in warm ocean currents once they reach maturity.
The race for a fishing site is on, with the fisheries department calling for applications for the laying of floats (kannizzati) by the end of this month - the lampuki fishing season starts in earnest in mid-August and extends into January.
The floats, made of palm fronds, are known also as fish aggregating devices (FADs) - they are set on the surface of the sea to attract the lampuka, which fishermen then round up and catch in their nets.
These floats build up marine growth which sets up a food chain for the dolphin fish to feed on. As the lampuki seek the shade and food the floats provide they are rounded up and netted.
A net could cost anything between Lm400 and Lm500 and each boat usually has two nets on board in case one is damaged, Mr Portanier explained.
While up to two decades or so ago, Maltese fishermen used to catch 97 per cent of all the catches of lampuki in the Mediterranean, their tally has now dwindled to about 50 per cent of all catches since the number of Maltese fishermen has declined and Italian and Tunisian fishermen are today also fishing for the lampuka, which they used to ignore.
The sea north east of Malta is relatively shallow at about 60 fathoms (120 metres), but in the west, which is traditionally fished by Gozitans, depths reach close to 500 fathoms. The deeper the sea, the higher the cost of the floats, as these have to be anchored to the seabed by means of a stone slab to which a nylon rope is attached, the other end holding the float in position on the surface.
Each fisherman is granted a 'line', a direction, by the fisheries department along which he would lay about 400 floats, each costing about Lm7.
It is a serious business: according to the Government Gazette, fishing boats cannot be less than six metres long, and apart from other equipment, it must have a radio telephone or VHF. The licence to lay floats is personal, and not transferable.
The first float in the 'line' would be laid at about six nautical miles offshore, the last one in that line going out to about 150 miles, as floats are laid at a distance from each other. It is back-breaking work, and an amateur fisherman lost his boat off Gnejna some years ago, when his stone slab-laden luzzu was swamped by a choppy sea.
The government does not give fishermen any assistance for the fishing of lampuki.
Mr Portanier explained that lampuki are migratory fish that enter the Mediterranean through the straits of Gibraltar. He recalled an instance last year when a fisherman netted a lampuka which had been tagged by an American institute.
The fisherman, however, only got back to shore with one half of the tag - he had inadvertently thrown away the other half before he realised what it was.
"A lampuka can grow up to 30 kilos during its life span of five years. It is the fastest growing fish in the world and as it grows, the mouth and the eyes remain in the same position they were when the fish was young," Mr Portanier said.
This results in the fish gaining a distinctive menacing forehead which distorts the shape of the fish.
Lampuki are, however, capable of kaleidoscopic colour changes, turning from gold - hence the dorado moniker - to electric blue, to silver. The colours fade as the fish die - Roman emperors used lampuki to entertain guests, setting lampuki fish free in pools for guests to watch the colour changes in the fish's death throes.
"Lampuki tend to follow a different path every year depending on the availability of food. They feed mostly on flying fish, squid and white bait," Mr Portanier said.
"The changing pattern in the route lampuki take in their migration, following the food trail, has a great bearing on the amount of fish each fisherman manages to net," Mr Portanier said.
Dolphin fish are found in the sea all over the world.