Wow, Wow, Wow, what a day. I’ll get to the point as quickly as possible so you can understand where all the Wow’s were coming from.

The morning was the usual procedure, bathroom, coffee shop, fish processing company and marine supply store. We also managed to get out on the fishing grounds at a pretty decent hour as there wasn’t much to slow us down today. The weather was rainy, cold and thankfully no waves on the ocean which allowed the boat to stay where we wanted it to without drifting too quickly. Chris was in the driver’s seat today and putting us on top of some locations he chose before coming up here. Most of his choices were based on the geography of the ocean floor, rock piles are good as that is where fish like to hang out. The day was semi successful as we managed to pull in about a dozen Lingcod and Yellow Eye Rock fish.

Then around 7:00 the excitement hit. Some absolutely large fish thought my jig was enticing and took hold. For about 15 minutes I fought with a 145 lb Halibut that had to be harpooned twice just to get it into the boat. If Hollywood wrote a scene about getting a fish into a boat it would happen similar to what we did today. Believe it or not Riley managed to get most of the whole thing on film from the flying bridge above the deck of the boat, so video will come some day. I was doing the rod work, Art was coaching on how to keep the fish on the hook and Chris was making sure I knew how to line up the fish for harpooning. Because a flopping Halibut on the deck is so dangerous, Doug and Vinny mainly kept back.

Yes it was the highlight of my day and one more part that is making this trip a “Once in a lifetime trip”. After the monster was on the boat it was time to call it a day and head back for fish cleaning.

As a side note, we dropped some crab traps yesterday and while part of our group was cleaning fish the other part went to check the traps. It seems that we’re better at catching snails than crabs. The fish cleaning took 4.5 hours so we didn’t finish up until 12:30 and yes it was finally dark by then. Another 30 minutes of cleaning the fish smell away from our hands and gear, and it is now time to call it a day.
The picture for the day is me with the 145lb Halibut, that measured 66 inches long. We didn’t get around to taking the picture until it was dark out so it might be hard to see.

Right on.

J

Doug’s Plugs: www.CameraLandNY.com