Catch of the Day

 Finishing salmon early, I decided to take my client to one of my favorite deep water halibut holes.
After dropping the anchor in 550 feet I cleaned the salmon to get the guts and gills for fresh halibut bait.
I grabbed as much bait on the big twelve ott circle hook as it would hold.
  "Once that gets on the bottom the big flatties should come running. No good self respecting halibut could turn down a meal like that," I encouraged the client.
 "Is there really a bottom here," I heard him say quite some time later, as his bait and sinker still plummeted towards the sea floor deep below.
  At last his line bottomed out and went slack.
  "Give it four or five cranks up off the bottom, "I instructed, watching as he cranked the slack out of the line. The bait and sinker were hanging nicely.
  "Ok, sit back and watch for the tap on the tip of the rod," I said.
  We sat eating cookies and visiting for a while.
  First came the rock fish. We landed some nice yellow eyes and a tiger rock fish. Off to a good start.
  The first halibut up was a small one. It was legal but not what I was looking for. "Are you sure?" questioned the client as I tossed the small halibut overboard.
  "No guarantees, but I think we can do better than that," I replied.
  The client's rod slammed in a hard bend, "Get it, crank like crazy!" I cheered him on. He was cranking like crazy.
  "OK, slow down and pace yourself," I instructed, "You have a long, long way to go."
  The big fish really fought, but finally we managed to bring it on board. It weighed a nice 108 pounds. Not one we could keep but a very nice fish.
  "That is the largest fish I've ever caught," the client told me as we snapped several photo's. I tossed the big fish over the side and watched him blast towards the bottom as soon as he touched the water.
  We baited the hook and sent it back to the bottom.
  In just a short while the rod once again bowed towards the ocean surface.
  "Fish on!"
  After another long battle on already burning arm muscles another huge halibut head broke the surface. It was a monster!
  I shark hooked it and then asked the client to grab a hook and help. Together we huffed and puffed and muscled the big fish on board.
  It was larger than I had thought.
  "This is definitely a keeper," I said looking at my measurements on my boat deck. We needed the big fish to be longer than 68 inches.
This one stretched to 70.5 inches! A true monster.
  Looking at the tide book measurement chart, the big fish looks to be about 180 pounds.
  "I can't believe it," the client kept saying over and over, while staring at the huge fish laying on deck.
  We packed up the boat and headed for town. Once we hit calm water we paused for some nice pictures.
  What a day, and what a great fish.

The Long Drift

 "Hey what is that over there?" the client asked as he pointed to something in the ocean.
  "Looks red like a jerry jug gas can," I replied.
   Just this morning I had spoken with another one of our guides who showed me a jerry jug he had found floating in the ocean the day before.
  "Look at the writing on it," Paul had said. I looked and then did a double take. It was in Japanese.
  Telling the client to keep the faded red jug in sight, I turned the boat in a wide loop so as not to tangle the lines I was trolling.
It took some maneuvering of the boat, but finally I was lined up and heading to the orange jug.
  I netted the jug and brought it on board.
  "Look at the writing," I commented to the client. His eyes bugged out a little. 
  "What is that?" he asked.
  "It is Japanese," I informed him. I then went on to explain how a lot of the debris from the tsunami was now reaching our coast of Alaska.
  We had a good time looking over the jug and talking about how far this very jug must have drifted.
  We took many pictures of the jug, and then got back to fishing.
   "Sure hope there is not radiation on that jug," the client said some time later.
  I had not even considered that. "I hope not myself," I said as I looked at my gloves I had just been handling the jug with.
  We enjoyed a good day of fishing, but all through the day I would look up and see the red jug and think about it floating from Japan since March 2011 only to be discovered in Sitka, Alaska in June 2012.  Just one tiny piece of rubble from all the destruction that had hit their coast.
  I would love to know where the jug had been washed from. Maybe a marina along the coast. Perhaps it had been stored inside a boat before the boat was lost in the big quake after shocks.
  Who knows? I will keep the pictures of the jug as a reminder that even though an ocean may separate us, we are still connected as humans on this earth.

Some times the big ones don't get away

  We had a great day of halibut fishing today. After limiting on our king salmon we anchored over deep water for halibut.  I had to apologize for the depth of the water... it was over 500 feet deep.

 We had just dropped the four lines to the bottom when the rockfish started pecking at the bait. Twitch, twitch, the rod tips wiggled. We managed three nice tiger rock fish before the first rod signaled halibut.
  Big Halibut! "Wait... wait..." the rod finally bowed to the ocean nearly dipping its tip into the salt water. "Get him now! Reel, Reel, reel!" I shouted, as the client burned the reel handle into the big fish.
  I could see he was reeling as fast as he could but the line was burning OFF the reel and not onto it. I tightened the drag as the big fish continued taking line.
  "Wait him out. It's all you can do," I coached, "get back on him as soon as he stops running."
  At last the big fish slowed and stopped.
  "Now get back to reeling and see if we can turn his head off the bottom," I said.
  The battle had just begun. Each time the line seemed to be coming on the reel the big fish would make another charge to the bottom.
It took some time but eventually the big runs became less and less.
  "You've got him coming up now, just keep his head pointed up. When you stop to rest he will turn over and head back to the bottom."
 We finally had the big fish to the side of the boat and ready to bring on board. As gently as I could I slid him onto the deck.
 The halibut was tired enough that it never wiggled on the deck. We laid it out on my measurements. It was a whopping 67 inches long.
One inch short of being a keeper under our halibut laws of this season.
  We quickly took pictures and slid his huge body back into the sea. With a monster woosh of his tail he disappeared into the inky depths.
 That was our big one for the day. He booked out at 155.6 pounds. We also had a 135 pounder, a 125 pounder, a 77 pounder and a 50 pounder.
All released according to the law.
We did manage to fill our limits of four halibut under 45 inches for the legal limit.
What a great day of fishing.

  Sometimes the big ones don't get away, but rather, are turned loose to fight another day.

Two for One

"FISH ON!" shouted the client as he leaned into the reel handle.

  "Crank, crank, crank!" I shouted back, watching his rod tip to determine what kind of bottom fish he was dealing with.

  We were halibut fishing at Jurassic Park ( a place we have named for the amount of huge fish caught there), hoping for a two hundred  pound halibut.

  Rock fish usually come before the halibut, and the "Park" is teeming with big Ling Cod.

  "Looks like a rock fish," I commented to a client standing near me. The rod was not bent all that far over and was jiggling like  a rock fish wiggle.

  I turned my back to bait a hook of another client when the guy reeling shouted, Captain, the line is not coming in!"

  "It has to be," I said as I made my way to his bending rod.

  Sure enough his rod was bent double like a big fish and the drag was spinning instead of bringing in line.

  "What in the world?"

  "I was reeling in just fine and all of a sudden the rod bent way over and the line stopped coming in," he replied.

I tightened his drag as much as I thought the 90 pound test line would handle left him to his reeling.

  "Use the waves to help you pump the fish in," I offered, "Don't just try to muscle him all the way or you'll burn your arms out.

We were fishing in 350 feet of water and that is a long, long way if you try to muscle a fish all the way as fast as you can reel.

  It took quite a while before the line gave signs of the fish getting close to the boat.

  I grabbed the line with my gloved hands and began gently working the fish out of the depths below the boat.

  "It's a rock fish," said one client, but instantly the other client leaning over, said, "it's a Ling Cod."

  As the fish came into my view there was quite a sight. Two fish in one!

  Sure enough the client had hooked a big Yellow Eye Rockfish, but soon after hooking it a huge Ling Cod swallowed it head first.

  I grabbed the leader and lifted both fish into the boat. The Ling Cod was not hooked at all but refused to let go of his hard earned meal.

I worked the hook out of the rock fish and we took many pictures of the Rockfish Ling Cod combination.

 The Ling Cod was much too large for our slot limit so we had to release him.

  We were catching several Yellow Eye Rock fish so I asked the clients if they would allow me to leave the rock fish in the Ling Cod's mouth so he could finish his hard earned meal. We all agreed.

  It was fun watching the big cod swim out of sight with a big orange rock fish firmly inside his mouth.

  It's not every day you can catch a two for one like that.