The Rest of the Fish Story

Hi, this is Ginger writing an answer to Gigi's other question.

Halibut are flat fish. When they are first born they have eyes on either side of their head like regular fish. In time, their eyes migrate so they are both on the same side of the fish's head. From that point on, they always lie on their side, eyes pointing up. The side of the fish that is down is white and the side that is up (with the eyes) is mottled brown. This makes for good camouflage - when the fish is swimming along the bottom it blends in to the surroundings, when it swims up in the water column a predator looking up at it from below would see the white side which would not be very noticeable against the background of water.

They don't change color when they die - this is just what they look like.

First I would like to answer Gigi’s question about anchoring in 125 feet of water. That is considered fairly deep for anchoring pleasure craft. The common practice would be to use a scope of 5 to 1 or even 7 to 1, depending on the weather. The more wind and current you have the more anchor line you need. For anchoring in a storm in 125 feet of water, you should use as much as 800 feet of anchor line. DUNVEGAN only carries 50 feet of chain with 300 feet of nylon line so you can see we far exceeded the standard. You can also use a line tied to the stern and then to shore if the circumstances allow it.

DUNVEGAN is fitted with a mast and lifting boom. We do not have a dinghy; we use kayaks, so I haven’t used the lifting boom for much of anything. I almost forgot I even had it at my disposal. First I thought we would use the pot puller davit to hoist the halibut while the obvious solution was staring me in the face.

I opened the transom door and hooked the block and tackle from the boom to a loop of line through the fishes jaw and quite easily hauled it aboard. It looked a little bigger hanging in the cockpit than I originally thought. The halibut measured 63” which according to a couple charts we have that show a halibut’s weight extrapolated from it’s length indicated it weighed at least 127.5 pounds!

This is the first halibut I have filleted but as it turns out it is easier than some other fish. This is also the first time I have had to walk from one end of a fish to the other while I was filleting it.

The fillets were cut into chunks and put into ziplock freezer bags. We emptied everything out of the refrigerator and stuffed if full with halibut.

This then explains why we ended up in Juneau a couple days early. The meat was fine for awhile but it needed to be vacuum packed and frozen as soon as possible. We pulled anchor early on Sunday morning and motored the 57 nm to Juneau to find a processor which is a whole other story.