Читать книгу Never Cry Halibut. and Other Alaska Hunting and Fishing Tales онлайн

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“Yeah, sorry, I can’t touch crab, but I’m almost done writing a poem about how hard crabbing is. Just give me a sec, and I’ll read it to you. By the way, can you make me another cup of coffee? Don’t forget the cream and sugar this time. And make sure it’s organic.”

On a rare day off, I borrowed a skiff and dropped a hook into the shallows near the mouth of a spawning salmon stream. Almost instantly a nice halibut bit, and my pole started hammering. Somehow, after slitting its jugular with a dull pocketknife and letting it bleed out for a few minutes, I managed to get the fifty-pound fish aboard with a broken salmon gaff. It was the biggest halibut I’d seen alive. Now that I was an expert, I started offering advice to anyone who’d listen on how to catch halibut.

“They’re in the shallows. Everyone’s fishing too deep,” I told some seasoned fishermen at the bar in Hoonah.

“In the seventies, I hauled a fish to the surface in Frederick Sound that must have weighed 1,500 pounds, and it just spat the hook,” an old man said. He shook his head as if he still couldn’t believe what he’d seen.