Vancouver Fishing

[FLBentRider]

I think they call that a "barn door" hailbut.

[tsquared]

A lot of guys are releasing the "barn doors" as they say are not as good eating as the smaller ones. Plus, the big ones are all females so it's good for keeping the numbers up. I'd certainly settle for one of the "small" ones--about 45 lbs would do nicely in my freezer!
T2

[RAF128]

At my age I don't think I could handle a tussle with one of those biguns.   

[Quarlow]

One time of the fish boats, It was blowing a pretty nasty storm out. So all the boats head for what we call a harbour day. We all find a small bay even if you can get only 2 boats in it. Of course there are little bays everywhere you look. This particular day we were in a bay called Freeman pass, there was about 15 boats in there all rafted together, which means they were all side by side, stern to stern, you could walk from one to another. We were stuck in there for 2 days but I don't think anyone noticed how long we stay as you never seen so much booze and partying in your life. Well this one captain got board so he dug out a hand jigging rig and went up on the bow of his boat saying "Well I can at least catch enough to buy another bottle of whiskey". Drunk as a skunk, we all told him he wouldn't catch anything in here but he insisted he would. He jigged for about 10 minutes and just lost his bait to something small. So he re baits the hook with a chunk of chicken and that thing never even hit the bottom and his line went zinging like crazy. Long story short, after 45 minutes of fighting and 4 of us to haul this thing over the bow rail cause we can't get to the side rail for all the rigging on the boats, he pulls in a 311 halibut on an 8' jigging rod. Who'd a thunk it that there would be something that big in that little harbour. And this is not a fish story. They still talk and laugh about that in the Chinese food restaurant in Ladner were all the fisherman hang out.

[Bigun]

Thanks for the links Quarlow, Ross.  When we were up at Winter Harbor years ago the guides were telling us the big one's (150# +)were not worth keeping as they were full of worms, and high in mercury. Don't know how much truth there is to it as we did not have to make that call. We caught 40-50 pounders with one up to 95 and perfectly happy with all we had

[Quarlow]

Hope that helps you.