Posted on 08/16/2011 2:18:41 PM PDT by NormsRevenge
Annette Gutierrez embarked on her first-ever fishing trip recently out of Valdez, Alaska, and returned with a monstrous Pacific halibut weighing 335.7 pounds and measuring 88 inches from mouth to tail -- or nearly two feet taller than the 5-foot-6 angler.
Chalk it up to beginner's luck, or Lady Luck, but Gutierrez, a New Mexico resident who works seasonally in Alaska, has joined the elite few to have landed a "barn door" halibut topping 300 pounds.
"It was insane to get such a very big fish my first time," said Gutierrez, in an interview last week with the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner. "Oh my God, it was huge."
The catch vaulted Gutierrez, 47, a truck driver for a Fairbanks construction firm, into first place in the Valdez Halibut Derby, which will pay $15,000 for the heaviest halibut after the season-long derby ends on Sept. 4.
(Excerpt) Read more at grindtv.com ...
I’ve got a breaded halibut with raspberry sauce recipe, but you can’t buy good (or any) halibut down here. We do prepare it every time we go to Bozeman, however. There is a fish market that flies it in twice a week. Yum!
110 is my biggest out of Yakutat. My daughter caught a 130. Like bringing a moving refrigerator up from 150 feet down.
How’d she get it into the boat?
on a fishing show the guy would shoot them with a 357 magnum ,made it easier to get it on board
She caught a big efish.
I can see how shooting them would work easier. My job on a halibut boat used to be whacking them on the nose with a sawed-off baseball bat. They’re fighters.
Wow, this fishing stuff is easy.
Should have seen the one that got away??? LOL Good for her...that’s a nice catch! Hope she and her family like to eat fish.....
I’ve never fished for big fish anywhere.,, heck I was lucky to catch little ones.
I may have to ride along on a alaska fishing tour next cruise up there.. I can’t imagine a fish as big as me much less the whopper this gal caught.. talk about feeding a village for a month
Went to Alaska last 2 weeks saw a 197 lb Halibut hanging at Valdez harbor watched the guys filet it.
Best tasting fish ever.
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must have been the Exxon cooking oil in the water.. makes the fish tastier
I love Halibut. Too bad it’s $24.00 a pound.
Okay, honey, you caught it, you clean it.
Costco and WalMart don’t carry it either. ;-)
Hope she didn’t hide the halibut on the poop deck (for any Yogi Yorgesson fans out there).
That’s on my bucket list to catch one of those......the halibut that is...........
Fantastic! I’m sending this to my son...who goes fishing in Mexico whenever he can (off Baja), so maybe this is a trade-off?
LOL! That's my theory, too.
Long lined for halibut in AK, just me and the skipper on the boat, laid out 7 miles of 1/4” gold line with a snap on gannon baited hook every thee fathoms every tide. Hardest work with very little sleep ever done in my life. routine was, pick set, gill and gut, ice fish down below decks, scrupulously clean the deck. bait and set, eat, drift and sleep for couple hours, then run out, pick the set and start all over again.
I ran the level wind reel hydraulics and the skipper used the gaff. The big rawboned guy was the strongest man ever saw, when he said fish coming, I would slow down reel, when he swung the gaff, would speed up, and he would easily haul a 2-300 pound halibut on board and smack them with a billy club.
Halibut sizes were, chickens, 20-40, 40-60, 60-80, 80-100, then bigger was a whale.
She’ll never enjoy fishing again. She should take up hunting next.
She reeled in Gov. Christie? WOW!
When you land a fish of considerable size and out of fairly deep water, their swim bladder doesn’t have time to adjust to the depth change. They’re going to die anyway. Time to fillet.
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