My Big Halibut

For the past week, I have been up with my brother and dad in Tofino, on the West Coast of Vancouver Island. I’ve been spending quality time with them and taking a break from electronics (except weather models and marine observations, of course), and it has been a great trip. We left earlier this afternoon and are now in Nanaimo, and will spend the night here before taking the ferry to Tsawwassen tomorrow morning. In retrospect, I should have written a quick log of the things we did each day, but since I didn’t, I’ll just talk about the catch of a lifetime.

Tofino is a small town at the end of the Esowista Peninsula on Vancouver Island, situated on the shores of Clayoquot Sound. Clayoquot Sound is a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve, and even a peak from Tofino itself is enough to tell you that it more than deserves that designation. Everybody has their preferences when it comes to scenery, but for me, Clayoquot Sound is hands-down the most beautiful place I have ever been to in my entire life. And the salmon fishing is almost always phenomenal.

However, for the first few days, fishing was dreadfully slow. Going in to the trip, I expected the salmon fishing to be mediocre because (1) it was still early in the season and (2) the infamous Blob resulted in decreased primary productivity and feed for the salmon off the coast. Our first day, we fished and fished for salmon but caught nothing. We did, however, pick up a dozen or so consolation rockcod near Surprise Reef, which is just south of Wickaninnish Island, the small island west of Tofino and southeast of Vargas Island. It is so named because it is a razor-sharp reef that is barely under the surface, sure to give any boater a pleasant “surprise” when they run into it. Ocean swells crash onto the reef and the currents take baitfish to the downstream side of the reef (ex: seaward side on a ebb tide). Rockfish like rocks and small fish, so we were able to catch a ton in a very short period of time. I did this back when I was in elementary school with my dad and constantly bragged throughout the trip about how I got seven fish and he got two, but now I realize he was simply giving me the fish he hooked. Going back there was more than just catching fish – it was about reconnecting with my past and establishing a better link between elementary-school Charlie and college-graduate Charlie. If there’s one thing I learned in school, it’s that life is a continuous function, not a piecewise one.

Our second day – we decided to go shrimping in Fortune Channel. This was by all measures a complete disaster. We lost a shrimp pot and obtained three shrimp. We tried fishing for salmon and bottomfish inside Fortune Channel and several narrow passages, namely Tsapee Narrows, Dawley Passage, and Matslet Narrows, and we got absolutely nothing. Morale was low. However, I discovered a new type of crab, as many found their way into our pots. They were much too small to keep, but it’s always fun to discover something you didn’t know existed. Expect to see me on the cover of Scientific Canadian in the next couple weeks or so.

The third day, we decided that we were going to get a salmon no matter what it took. We woke up early, gulped down some cereal, fixed up some sandwiches, and headed straight for the open ocean, as this is where most of the action was taking place. We ended up fishing several miles offshore Long Beach on the Esowista Peninsula and eventually went off the map above, coming closer to Ucluelet, a similarly-sized town to Tofino that is 24 miles to the southeast along the coast of Vancouver Island. My dad snatched a 7-8 pound coho, I caught a 16-18lb Chinook, and my brother wrangled a 24-pound halibut. We picked up a rockcod as well. Pretty slow fishing considering we were out for almost the entire day, but we were pleased that we didn’t come home empty-handed.

The fourth day was pretty darn slow as well. We released a small Chinook, and kept two lingcod. However, one of the lingcod was bright blue, something I had never seen before. It turns out that around 20% of lingcod have a blue tint throughout their skin, organs, and flesh, and this is hypothesized to be due to biliverdin, a green bile pigment that results from white blood cells breaking down dead red blood cells and breaking down hemoglobin into biliverdin. I’m looking forward to eating it! We also went over to Ahousaht, a remote First Nations settlement on the southeast side of Flores Island. We know the guy who built the motel, general store, gas dock, restaurant, and several houses and has owned much of the settlement since the early 50s. He’s 80 now, and he’s been trying to sell the place for as long as I can remember. He said he’s got a guy coming to look at it next week. It’s a very sentimental and nostalgic place, and it was great to be back.

I went to bed, and I remember having a blissful and wildly optimistic outlook for fishing the next day. Tomorrow was going to be the day our fortunes turned around.

And boy did they ever!

My brother was depressed with constantly waking up at the crack of dawn to find fish and failing every time, so he decided to stay home for the day. My dad and I woke up and drove our 22′ Grady White through 16 miles of open ocean to a place called Hyson Bank in the hopes of finding some fish. We fished for a couple hours, but didn’t have a single bite, so we decided to head a little closer to shore, around 6 miles offshore Long Beach. We snagged a poor little rockcod that vomited its guts out due to the change in pressure, but that was all we got. So finally, we decided to go to a little hump a mile or two closer to shore and just drift. It would be nice to at least lie down and not have to worry about trolling, which is how we had been doing most of our fishing for the trip.

We decided to send a big herring close to the bottom on either side of the boat in the hopes that some fish – likely a halibut – would come along and snatch it. We did this by using two downriggers, which are convenient devices that lower and raise a lead ball to the depth of your choice and include a clip to connect your line to the downrigger so that you can control the specific depth of your bait or lure. When a fish comes along, it will pop the line right out of the clip, allowing you to fight the fish and raise the downrigger ball back to the surface. Halibut have very sharp teeth and often bite right through typical salmon leaders, but we were really tired and pessimistic that we’d catch anything, so we just used our salmon tackle, as it was already completely ready for use. We did have a spare halibut leader around though, so I put that on another halibut rod and sent everything down to the bottom, giving us three rods in total. I started jigging, but eventually put the rod in the rod holder and let the rocking of the boat do the jigging for me. The clouds were breaking, the wind was slowing, and it was time for me to bask in the sunshine.

I lied for a good 30 minutes on the bow of the boat before I noticed that my dad had also gone to the cabin to take a nap. Even though we were simply drifting, somebody should always be watching the boat. I watched the rods, fixed the rod holder that the halibut rod was in, and then it happened.

I was looking back at the rod on the port side of the boat, and all the sudden, it suddenly went slack as the line popped out of the clip holding it to the downrigger ball. A split second later, it started moving like crazy. I screamed every fisherman’s favorite phrase, “Fish On!,” and grabbed the rod, jolting my dad awake in the process. I started playing this fish while my dad started bringing in all the other gear.

Halibut aren’t the flashiest fighters, but they are strong and incredibly stubborn. As a fish that spends its life on the sea floor, halibut do NOT like to go anywhere near the surface. In fact, at first, I was second-guessing myself and questioning whether I even had a fish, as it seemed like I had simply hooked the bottom. However, every once in a while, there would be a a little change in line tension, and it became apparent that I had a sea monster on the other end of the line.

I battled this fish for a good 10-15 minutes before getting her up to the surface, maybe even longer. I needed to be very careful because this struck the salmon rod with light tackle, and it would be easy for the fish to break the line or even the rod if I wasn’t paying attention. Furthermore, the halibut could easily bite right through the leader, and there was nothing we could do about that. I was just trying to get it to the surface in the fastest way possible without breaking the line in the process.

I will never forget the first glimpse I got of this fish. It was bigger than I could have ever imagined. It was certainly too big to fit into our net, so we brought out our brand new halibut harpoon and went in for the kill. Unfortunately, the leader my dad had tied was self-admitted to be much to long, so I was unable to simply reel the halibut in to get it close to the boat. Instead, I had to lift the rod wayyyy up in the air and walk as far back as possible to get the fish even remotely close to the boat. After a long time of frantic communication (i.e. yelling), I finally got the fish close enough to the boat for my dad to harpoon it.

And then, all hell broke loose.

My dad stuck the harpoon as hard as he could into the fish, but the harpoon was far too dull and didn’t even puncture the skin. Needless to say, the fish didn’t enjoy that. She zoomed back toward the bottom, and the reel screamed, losing line at relativistic speeds. It took me another good 5-10 minutes to get the fish back up to the surface, and then the frantic communication and awkward rod maneuvering resumed. We decided it would be best to try and net the fish, but the fish simply wouldn’t fit in the net. Therefore, my dad asked me to get the gaff hook, a medieval-ish fish extermination device, while he held the rod, and gaff the halibut myself. Unfortunately, there was a bit of a miscommunication, as I got only the individual gaff hook instead of putting the gaff on the long pole it is supposed to go onto. There was more frantic communication, and I tried to gaff the fish through the jaw to avoid slicing it right through the loins. I missed, and the fish took another run for China, this time over the stern of the boat between our main and backup engines. Looking back on it, my dad laughed and said I had “halibut fever” and wasn’t thinking clearly. It’s funny now, but we are very lucky that I didn’t lose us the fish at that very moment.

My dad gave me the rod back and decided to take this gaffing business into his own hands. I reeled the fish as close as I could, moved the rod as far back as high as I could, and my dad stuck the gaff directly into the fish, solidly securing it to a barbaric fang of stainless steel. We hoisted the fish into the boat, and it immediately started flopping like crazy. I’ve seen plenty of 10 pound fish flop like crazy, and it’s a hectic scene. But nothing can compare to a giant halibut going beserk on your boat. It was flopping all over the place and I am astounded that it didn’t break anything other than knocking off a latch on our tackle box. I’ve heard of large halibut seriously injuring people, and after seeing this one, I could only imagine what one of those 400 pounders in Alaska could do to a boat. Many people chasing big halibut keep a gun on the boat to shoot them and kill them before hauling them in the boat, but it is illegal to take firearms across the border.

I tried my best to “wrangle” the halibut so that I could slit its gills and let it bleed out. Most fish can be knocked out with the “fish bonker,” but halibut are almost impossible to kill. It was a pretty brutal scene – there was probably 1-2 pounds of blood on the deck within a few seconds of cutting the gills. I tried to get some pictures with the halibut while I was still out on the open ocean, but it was incredibly hard to lift up. This was a HEAVY fish.

We cleaned up, put the halibut in the fishbox (it didn’t fit), and decided to head home. That was enough fish for one day, and cleaning and packaging that thing took me well over two hours. Back at the dock, the fish maxed out our scale at 62 pounds, and that was with its tail still supporting some of the weight. I’d estimate it was right around 75 pounds total before bleeding. It is one of several fish in my life that I will always remember.

I’ve become somewhat of a changed man after catching this fish. After catching so many 5-10 pound salmon, you kinda go on autopilot when you, well, club them to death. But when you get a fish that’s this big, it becomes apparent that these majestic animals do NOT want to die, and you think more about life and death. Part of me felt guilty for killing this beautiful fish, but I felt as though it was a “good guilt,” because it made me think more about the circle of life and how we must kill other animals for food. In particular, it made me think a lot more about eating meat. If I feel guilty for killing a fish, you would think that I would really feel guilty for eating a hamburger. But I haven’t felt that way in the past.

This made me realize that I felt somewhat guilty sometimes when killing animals, but had no shame in eating them. That’s a glaring inconsistency in my thinking, and one I had lazily accepted but never really given true thought to until I caught this massive fish. I used to be a pescetarian (seafood only, so I could still go fishing and eat my catch), but I only did it because I was concerned about my carbon footprint, not about the animals themselves. After all, humans are omnivores and are meant to eat meat. After a couple years, I succumbed to bacon and lost my way, and have been happily chowing down carne asada tacos ever since. But perhaps it’s time to revisit becoming a pescetarian, or, at the very least, sharply reducing my meat intake.

Some fish, eh?