Published: August 02, 2009
THE BEST FISH stories have no witnesses.
No pictures, no blog posts, no fillets
to fork out to friends and family. Just a story that can be
either believed or cast aside like some rotten dogfish.
That, my dear Peninsulites, is the sort of tale I’m about to tell you.
It’s the kind of story where a buddy takes his ailing
friend out to fish. He takes him because that’s what they’ve
done for decades, and because it helps them forget about the medical
treatments he’s had to endure during the last year.
Of course, his friend isn’t quite as strong as he was when they both graduated from Port Angeles High School in 1970.
He’s lost 40 pounds since beginning treatments for hepatitis C. And sometimes he feels really weak.
All that fades like the morning fog when he climbs aboard
his buddy’s 16-foot boat.
Rob and Bob
They’re both named
Robert.
The one with the boat goes by Bob (Beausoleil). The other is Rob (Stark). Not surprisingly, this makes for a little bit of confusion when the two are together, but they’re used to it.
Bob and Rob have known each other for more than 40 years. They became buddies in grade school and, years later, brothers, after they married into the same family.
While Bob manages Frugal's off Front
Street in Port Angeles, Rob builds tunnels all over the world and is
sometimes gone for months at a time.
Still, the two always managed to find time to fish together, even more so when Rob began his medical treatments last October.
“It’s like having the flu every day for 10 straight months,” Rob said of his illness. “Bob helped me through it. He’s been taking me all winter long. This last 10 months he’s been getting me out of the house.”
Kenai
Killer
Every time they go out the two friends use the same model
rod, a Kenai Killer Lamiglas made more than 20 years ago. And each
had a four-inch cut plug herring on the end of their line as they
mooched for king salmon in last Wednesday’s 90-degree heat.
They were in 51 feet of water between Kadaka Point and the Caves just west of Sekiu when something slammed Bob’s rod.
This was no pink, coho or even king. This was something all together different.
“I can’t even describe the power,” Bob said.
Indeed, he was at a loss for words as he battled the mammoth beast for nearly 30 minutes.
“I’ve known Bob for a long time, and he’s never
short for words,” Rob said. “He just kept saying, ‘I’ve got a
big fish.’ I said, ‘Bob, talk to me. What do you got?’ And he
said, ‘Look!’”
Rob leaned over the boat.
“It was unbelievable . . . it just went on forever.”
Huge halibut
The
massive white belly gave it away.
Bob had a monster halibut hooked square in the mouth.
“It was ripping my arms off,” Bob said. “It was nothing like I’ve ever felt before. I didn’t know anything like that existed.”
As he kept it atop the water, Rob scrambled with a tape measure to get the fish’s length.
“I pulled the tape measure out to 60 inches, and I didn’t even reach the gills yet,” Rob said. “You’re talking about a big fish.”
The flatty, a big female, dove violently back down into
the water before he could get a more accurate measurement. They
brought it up two more times during the next 30 minutes, with Rob
taking over the pole for a short time to get a feel of the fish.
It wasn’t until the final time they got it to the top that they were able to get an accurate measurement — 84 inches.
“It had
eyeballs like the size of a golf ball,” Rob said. “It could have
swallowed a live seal easy. For days we’re still seeing that
fish.”
Burden of proof
Ah, but herein lies the rub.
For nobody else may ever see that fish.
Bob and Rob had two things going against them that day.
First, halibut season ended a month ago, so they couldn’t legally keep the fish. Second, they didn’t have a camera, so there’s no way they could provide visual proof.
“We’d seen somebody way off in one direction and one way off in the other direction.” Rob said. “We wanted to waive them down to see if they had something, but we were pretty busy.”
The state record for Pacific halibut is 288 pounds, caught by Vic Stevens off Swiftsure Bank near Neah Bay in September of 1989. According to the halibut length/weight conversion chart on piscatorialpursuits.com, that fish would have been about 81 inches long.
What Bob and Rob claim to have caught comes out to
323.8 pounds on the same chart, easily eclipsing the state record.
Yet all they could do was pet the fish and send it back on its way.
It was the perfect medicine for Rob.
“I just had to feel what a thick slab like that feels like,” Rob said. “She was in perfect condition. Her tail wasn’t damaged, no marks on her. It was something else . . . good for the head.”
Added Bob: “Maybe it is a record, but I can’t prove it. I really don’t care [if people believe me]. To me it happened. To my partner it happened. It wasn’t the fish that got away. It was the fish that we let go.”
And
perhaps somewhere on the sandy bottom of the Strait of Juan de Fuca
that fish is cruising along, gobbling everything in sight like it did
that Wednesday.
Or maybe not.
Fact or fiction, hordes of anglers will surely be looking for it when halibut season opens again next spring.
You see, that’s the thing about a good fish story. Give it time, and it just keeps growing.