Fishing Alaska

Wildlife biology professor and fishing magazine writer Stan Cunningham as a whopper of a story concerning halibut fishing in Alaska. "We were fishing in Elfin Cove and we had been catching and releasing halibut all over the size of 60 to 70 pounds. We each had caught one and kept it. We had another one to keep but we didn't want to stop fishing so we would just catch and release with the circle hooks. We were able to do that pretty easily without hurting the fish. Everybody was getting kind of tired because

when you catch that many halibut in that deep water, probably 200 to 300 feet, your back and arms start to hurt. I had reeled in the last two and there were probably four guys fishing and the next guy up was my friend John who had already caught a 250 pounder that we had released. That really upset the captain. At the time, I worked for Fish Alaska and we were really promoting releasing large halibut because they were the breeders. Well this poll started jerking and there was obviously a good sized halibut on, we were fishing with full pink salmon so anything that is going to take that is going to be pretty big. I kept telling John, he needs to get the rod and all he was doing was making fun of me. I finally got the rod, hooked the fish and started reeling it in. He came over, gave me that look that buddies do, and said to me this is my damned fish, you get away."

So Stan turned over the rod to his friend John and tomorrow we will find out an amazing outcome.