A halibut good deal
The Reporter's Notebook
Last updated 7/24/2019 at 9:39am
I am a lousy fisherman, getting boxed out, except one time.
That was out of Kodiak, Alaska, fishing for halibut.
I was on a charter boat that had twin engines and a lot of speed. We were 50 miles out, where the skipper said that the area had a good halibut bed.
I was in Alaska to assist the owner of the Kodiak newspaper in preparing her property for sale, and every weekend she set me up with a new experience.
The skipper of this experience had a boatload of people and had prepared all the poles for each of us.
He explained that landing a halibut is like pulling a barn door up from the bottom of the sea.
Well, I had the experience of catching 13 halibut that day.
After a couple of catches my arms felt like they were ready to fall off, and I was hoping that the halibut would give me a break.
It seemed like I was the only one catching halibut, and the skipper said I could keep my limit (three) and we could distribute the rest among others.
Twice I had two on at the same time, since he had placed hooks at two different levels.
Towards the end of the day I caught one that weighed just over 175 pounds.
The skipper told me that he would take the halibut I had caught that were 35 pounds or just over. Later, I learned that halibut that size are the best eating.
I thought that when I moved over to the coulee that I would start fishing again. I had done some stream fishing, but not much lake fishing.
I went out on Banks Lake a couple of times, and, as luck would have it, I was blanked. It didn’t take long for me to realize that lake fishing wasn’t for me.
So, I was somewhat hesitant when the newspaper owner in Alaska said she had set me up for some halibut action.
The boat was about 50 feet long and had twin engines, the skipper said, so that he could get out to where the fishing was good faster than other boats, giving people more time to fish.
I am not certain how he knew that there were halibut where we went, but he was right on.
I kept the big halibut, and a couple of lesser size, giving one to the newspaper owner and having the other two prepared for shipping back.
I had made five trips to Kodiak during the time that I was helping
the owner shape up her property for sale.
On one of the weekends, she flew both me and my wife to Anchorage, where I arranged a trip to Denali National Park. On another weekend, she set me up to do a flyover of Kodiak Island, and on another we went to Glacier Bay. That included seeing a bunch of the famous Kodiak grizzlies working a stream and a hillside of mountain goats.
Through the several trips, I was able to be there during all seasons — on the island both when the sun hardly rises and when it hardly sets.
But the thrill of catching so many halibut still is in my memory.
At the end of the day, a fog bank chased us back to the island while the boat was paced by a pack of dolphins.
Still not much of a fisherman though.
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