Just For The Halibut!

Last Thursday we had the wonderful opportunity to go halibut fishing out of Whittier. For those of you who are unfamiliar with the fishing hotspots in Alaska, most halibut charters leave from Homer or Ninilchik, both a few hours away. Every time we have a day off it is really hard to want to drive several hours just to go fishing, and then drive back home and have to go to work the next morning (we usually have to be to work by 4:00 am). Well, we found a fella who fishes out of Whittier, just an hour away from our house! On Thursday morning, Andy, myself, and our friends, Chris and Tiffany, headed to Whittier. Whittier is an interesting fishing town. It used to only be accessible by boat or train, but in the recent years, the train tunnel has been used for cars. This 2.5 mile tunnel is one-way and runs on a very strict schedule. You have to be there before the time you want to go through, otherwise you'll find yourself waiting for an hour or so until the next time traffic is going that direction.


Another interesting thing about Whittier is the entire population, roughly 200, lives in the same building. This is because the weather in Whittier is hard to predict and is usually very rainy/snowy, cold, and extremely windy. To help combat the weather, this large building was built. Besides being living space, it also has a grocery store and an underground tunnel to the local school.

On the pier in Whittier.

Piloting the boat.

Juussssssssst fishin'!

If any of you have halibut fished before, it is largely a game of patience. I guess fishing is usually about being patient, but I have never been so frustrated before! Here's the deal: halibut live on the bottom of the ocean. We fished in spots that were about 300 feet deep, which meant we were letting out (and reeling in) 300 feet of line. As if that isn't already a lot of work, try reeling up a fish from that distance! Andy was the first to bring up a fish...and the second, and the third, and the fourth. Two of the fish he brought up were cod, so we let them go. Apparently these cod are full of worms and completely disgusting. The other fish he brought up were types of rockfish, good for fish tacos (or so we were told), so we kept them. Honestly, for the first few hours, no one brought up a single halibut, so that was the frustrating part. We moved to a different area and put our lines in. Lo and behold, guess who got a bite! ME! I started reeling that sucker in (there is a specific technique for halibut) and thought I was going to die. Andy caught it on video, but I don't have the right program to get footage off of our video camera onto the computer. Anyway, it was definitely THE hardest workout I have had in years! I know it sounds funny, but I was sweating like crazy (not to mention I was wearing thermals, a t-shirt, a sweatshirt, and two coats...) and my forearms were BURNING. It was crazy! Well, here is a picture of the fish that gave me my yearly workout! (AHH! It is killing me to not be able to turn our pictures! It's because I'm at the library. Sorry!)


Andy's first halibut.

Well, I have about a thousand more pictures, but rather than bore you, I'll sum it all up. We each caught our limit of two halibut, so those of you who can multiply should be able to figure out that we came home with four halibut. We also came home with some rockfish and about fifty shrimp.


With two of our halibut.

These shrimp were huge! Hopefully they will be yummy!

To celebrate our fun day, we purchased a vacuum packer. Obviously we can't eat all of our fish very quickly, so this will help them stay fresher for longer and not get freezer burn! I'm not going to go into how long it took us to filet, clean, cut, and pack our fish, but let's put it this way. We got about TWO hours of sleep that night!...and then worked about a 14 hour day the next day! Ü