Scott Frey and Catherine Campbell decided to come to Alaska for their wedding. However, prior to the wedding they planned a day of halibut fishing and sight seeing on the majestic waters of the gulf of Alaska. Catherine was the first to book for the season and actually ended up booking the last day of fishing for our charter, September 13th. Scott, Catherine and four young airmen and soldiers from our local military bases joined us for a day that offered weather better than expected for mid September. Fishing started off a little slow with some average sized halibut and a nice Yellow Eye Rock Fish.
We then had a few line tangling snarls to deal with brought on by the menacing Dog Fish that eat all bait, slice lines and tangle what they don't slice. Once the mess was cleared and we went back to fishing Scott's rod tip dipped a couple times and then bent double for the beginning of a battle that lasted about 30 minutes and wore both Scott and the Halibut out. When the fish hit the deck we knew it was going to go close to 300 pounds as it did not fit in the fish hold and it exceeded the lengths posted in our tide book length/ weight charts. Once back in the harbor we broke the scales on our end of the harbor, guestimated the weight at about 300 lbs, took pictures and then carted it all the way to the other end of our harbor for another try at weighing it. The fish officially weighed 272 pounds but I am sure it lost 5 pounds or so of water weight in my fish hold.
Scott and Catherine went on and got married later in the week and I am sure that they will be telling their grandkids about this fishing trip many years from now.
