As requested by a few of the members that know me from DB, I'm reposting my halibut story. Some of you may have seen this before, but I hope you will bear with me anyway
I love it when a plan comes together, and even more so when there’s a bit of an effort behind the rewards. That is why this is a rather long story, so instead of making it short, I’ll try to make it exciting
Two and a half years ago I was up in the Arctic collaborating with some people up there for an experiment for my PhD. I was there for about 6 weeks, just as the light was returning after the mid-winter darkness. Surprisingly to me at the time, this is a magical time of year in the Arctic, with seemingly endless sunrises and sunsets and of course the northern lights. Even before I went I’d dreamed of hunting large Atlantic halibut, it has been ever since I started spearfishing. Up there I heard stories of hook and line fishermen catching halibut on a fairly regular basis, and I also found a few YouTube videos of SCUBA divers swimming up to large Atlantic halibut in what seemed to be fairly shallow waters.
Naturally, the idea of hunting halibut was milling away in my head and I started making plans. However, the Arctic winter is cold and dark and I never got a chance to give it a shot while I was working there and when I left I had no idea whether I’d have the chance to come back to give it a go. Therefore, the plans lingered in the back of my head, without ever really materializing into actual plans for a trip. I practically forgot all about the halibut hunting throughout the spring and summer, until this picture suddenly arrived in my email inbox just over two years ago:
My buddy is a big guy, 190cm+, and as you can see the halibut is even longer: 205 cm and weighing in at a rather astounding 152 kg (~335 lbs). That is bordering on obese for a halibut this length The fish was caught on sport fishing equipment from a small boat, and it had taken him almost 45 minutes to reel in the fish. A fish that big is a fish of a lifetime even by Atlantic halibut standards, and he told me he’d caught it at a depth of only 12-14 meters (~40 feet)! He also added that he’d been fishing in the same area many times throughout the summer and he’d caught halibut half the times he’d been out! Even better, more than half the fish he’d caught had been above the 30 kg mark, and they’d all been caught at depths from 5-25 meters. In other words, perfect for spearfishing… Needless to say these news got me excited and in the early fall I was headed up above the Arctic Circle again, finally ready for the much coveted halibut hunt.