Fishing the Salt

The last three years, our household has been severely lacking halibut in our freezer. We were the unfortunate victims of bad luck each consecutive year and non producing charters. This year was different!

Our buddy Wilbur bought a boat after a long stretch of being boat-less (he was too busy building cabin). He asked myself and a fellow pharmacist, Matt, if we wanted to head out to Montigue Island to target some halibut and rock fish. Of course we couldn't pass that opportunity up! If you don't know where that is, it's about a 3 to 3.5 hours boat ride our of Seward, in the Gulf of Alaska. It is known for bigger halibut and is a destination for many charters when the water is calm.

Well to combine three trips (between mid June and early July) into one story... we killed it! We caught fish all three times we went out there. The funny thing is Matt has never really fished for halibut until going with us... and he caught the most and biggest fish on each trip! The joke is that we have to take him if we want to catch fish.

It's a really fun time every trip we go out. We make a really great trio, all pitching in and helping out, sharing burdens, bounties, costs, and everything else. Lots of fish are caught and lots of laughs are had.

Needless to say, we won't have to worry about not having enough halibut now.

** I'm pulling a classic Danielle here... the below pics are out of order and all three trips are blurring together... but here they are.

We caught a bunch of small sharks. Apparently they are common, but this was a first for me in Alaska.

On our first trip out, the anchor got stuck on the bottom and broke off. Before our next trip, we didn't have the required gear to connect the newly braided rope to the chain, and the chain to the anchor. We spent hours improvising and this is part of what we came up with (multiple bolts here). If we would have waited until the store opened the next day, we would have missed out on 3 hours of fishing!

Another improvised pic... carabiner and loop bolt. The anchor ended up working perfectly and we didn't lose a second one!

Dennis came with us on our second trip. The seas were really rough and we were only functioning on a couple hours of sleep. I put him through the ringer on this trip and he took it like a champ (minus a little chumming).

A good haul of fish!

Dennis's big sea bass.

This is Matt... notice his shirt. Apparently he has some good buddies that go to DMU, and they know my sister Jessi. What a small world!

This is called a skate. Basically it's a cross between a halibut and stingray. They get huge and are extremely hard to real in. They are not good to eat, so they're considered a nuisance fish. We caught three of these on this trip. It's really disheartening to reel in a fish for 20 or 30 minutes, hoping it's a large halibut, and then finding out it's a darn skate!

Skate release party! The guy on the left is Wlibur's brother who was really sick and couldn't work ;)

Matt battling his 165 pound halibut.

The first peak at his monster.

One of the many skates we brought to the surface... ugly things with huge mouths.

Here is the boat's Captain, Wilbur. Again, another skate fooled us!

Filleting the 165 pound halibut. The Fillets were 4-5 inches thick!

For the large halibut, you have to kill them before they get in the boat or they will flop around, hurt people, and fling things out of the boat. Our method of choice is a .44 handgun. I found this jewel (art of the bullet) in a halibut cheek I was snacking on for lunch. It's not common, but I thought it was worth sharing.