By JULI PROBASCO-SOWERS
REGISTER STAFF WRITER
Homer, Alaska - The short, fat, fishing rod bowed against the weight of the 121-pound halibut.
The angler pulled on the rod then reeled in line - reeling and repeating, again and again.
Mike Wearly of Anchorage, Alaska, braced himself against the railing of the Donna Mae, a 28-foot charter fishing boat anchored off Elizabeth Island in southern Cook Inlet, off Kachemak Bay in Alaska, about 35 miles from port in Homer. Keeping his footing was tough between wrestling with the huge fish and the rocking of the boat on the ocean swells.
He caught some nice keepers in the 28- to 35-pound range, but he was waiting for "the big one." It took Wearly more than 30 minutes to reel in the halibut, his arms tiring and sweat standing on his forehead.
I, on the other hand, the landlubber from Iowa, was amazed when I pulled in the first halibut I ever caught, about a 28-pound fish. I quickly realized I should have been lifting weights for several weeks before I went halibut fishing on a vacation with my husband, Tom.
My desire to halibut fish in Alaska was fed in part from seeing photos of fish caught by Iowans. Adding fuel to the desire was an article I wrote in 2004 about Steve Button and wife Donna, former Iowans who live in Palmer, Alaska. I interviewed Steve while he was visiting in the Des Moines area.
During the summer season, Button takes his charter boat to Homer, where he lives on the boat and takes sport anglers into the waters of Kachemak Bay and Lower Cook Inlet.
The thought of catching a big fish was tantalizing as well. The previous biggest fish I caught was a 3-pound largemouth bass on the Cedar River.
After hooking into my first halibut, reeling and pulling up the rod time after time to bring in the fish set a burn into my arms. I kept going, determined to bring the fish to the surface under my own steam.
By the time the halibut was to the boat, I was sweating and pulling off outer layers of fleece and rain gear I had put on at 6:30 a.m. Button hauled the fish on board, and my first halibut was landed.
Halibut action ebbed and flowed through the afternoon, but the 90-minute trip out to where we fished, and the slack times in between halibut bites, were filled with watching wildlife. Mountain goats and their young could be seen on the craggy, steep slopes of the islands.
As we watched the goats, one of the Alaskans fishing on the Donna Mae, Keith Lipse of Big Lake, Alaska, said eagles sometimes swoop and knock the baby goats off the cliffs to provide themselves with dinner.
Tufted puffins, black-and-white birds with orange beaks, bobbed up and down with the ocean swells, just yards from the boat. (I won't detail all the wildlife we saw, but will mention the seagull that made a deposit on my rain gear back at the dock while the fish were being filleted.)
A humpback whale came several hundred yards from the boat, blowing water into the air and diving with its tail out of the water.
Occasionally an angler would catch a different species of fish on the bait of herring - a black bass, a very spiny Irish Lord fish and a ling cod. The large halibut was caught on a red salmon head used as bait.
Seeing the scenery and wildlife is reason enough to go halibut fishing. Besides, my husband and I enjoyed the company of four other people fishing off the Donna Mae, including Lipse; his cousin, LaVonne Phillips of Trabuco Canyon, Calif.; and friends Wearly and Sean Smithson of Anchorage, Alaska.
Only three of us were novice halibut anglers, but we all got some fish. And although this might sound a bit like sour grapes, experienced halibut anglers said the smaller fish caught by Tom and I and others on the boat, in the 30- to 45-pound range, are better eating than the ones weighing over 100 pounds.
About 12 hours after leaving port, we returned with 12 halibut - two each.
Tom and I were tired and sore as we made our way back to our room.
But the next day we headed home with 90 pounds of halibut and more memories than I ever imagined.
Reporter Juli Probasco-Sowers can reached at (515) 284-8134 or jprobasco@dmreg.com
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