Our family recently bought a boat. When you live in southeast Alaska, everyone has a boat, and we finally caught up to the ‘Jones’s’. My husband and my 5 year old son will spend any chance they can get out on the water. Sometimes they catch a fish, sometimes they don’t. King salmon is my favorite fish, but my husband prefers halibut, a white fish similar to cod or catfish, but better. The other day the boys went fishing as usual, hoping to catch something to eat for dinner that night. What they didn’t expect was to catch a monster 215 pound halibut!

My husband told me it was over 200 pounds and my first thought was “ok, it’s probably just over 100 and he’s blowing it out of proportion, but I’ll bring my camera anyway” NOPE! This fish was a whopping 215 pounds!

Unfortunately I wasn’t on the boat to catch the action, but I can imagine that reeling in something that weighed more than my 6 foot tall sturdily built husband was quite a sight to see. My husband made my son go into the cab of the boat while they were spearing it for safety reasons. Once they docked, it took both my husband and his dad to pull the mighty beast out of the boat. It wouldn’t fit on the fish cleaning station either so he had to filet it on the docks while my 5 year old stood by and watched my husband, a fish fileting artist slice it open with surgical precision. 

How to catch a 200 pound halibut

I asked my husband: “If you could give one piece of advice for someone wanting to catch a monster halibut, what would it be?” He said:”The bigger the bait, the bigger the fish.”

“The bigger the bait, the bigger the fish.”

Warning: If you are sensitive to hunting, fishing, the sight of animal blood and organs and the process of turning animals into food, this might not be the blog post for you.