AIRBANKS — Andy Workman and five friends went deer hunting on Kodiak Island last week and came home Tuesday with as much halibut meat as they did deer meat.But it wasn’t because the deer hunting was poor.
Workman, who grew up in Fairbanks and lives in Wasilla, caught a halibut that length-weight charts estimate at approximately 405 pounds. He caught the fish, which measured 89 3/4 inches, on Nov. 19 out of Port Lions near Kodiak.
“Our intention was just to go deer hunting,” said the 40-year-old Workman, who graduated from North Pole High and attended the University of Alaska Fairbanks before moving to Wasilla 10 years ago.
Accompanying Workman on the trip were Jason Bergman of Wasilla; Jason Chalstrom of Fairbanks; Rich Henderson of Wasilla; Jesse Hoffman of Wasilla; and Brett McLean of Wasilla. All six men work for Slayden Plumbing and Heating Co., which has offices in Fairbanks and Wasilla. They were fishing out of Kodiak Paradise Lodge in Port Lions with charter captain Garrit Hintz.
Though nobody ever got an official weight on the fish, it is believed to be the biggest halibut ever caught by a sport fisherman in Kodiak.
“I’ve never heard of a 400-pound halibut caught here before,” Donn Tracy, sport fish area manager for the Department of Fish and Game in Kodiak, said. “That’s a huge halibut.”
Jack Tragis of Fairbanks holds the record for the largest sport fish-caught halibut in Alaska with a 459-pounder caught in Unalaska Bay in 1996, the only place in Alaska where a 400-plus pound halibut has been caught by a sport fisherman.
The biggest fish ever caught by a sport fisherman in Valdez is 363 pounds and the largest sport fish-caught halibut in Homer is believed to be 376 pounds.
Tracy said the length-weight chart used to estimate the fish’s weight “is a pretty good indicator of weight.”
“It probably would have pegged the weight of that fish within 20 pounds or less,” he said.
The deer hunting on the day he caught the fish was slow, which prompted Workman to suggest to Hintz that they try a little halibut fishing.
“We were in a bay and we weren’t seeing anything,” explained Workman, who has hunted and fished in the area for several years. “We had a slack tide coming in and nothing was happening so I said, ‘Let’s go throw some lines in.’
“I’d fished out there quite a bit,” he said. “We usually try to go out there and get some (ling) cod and halibut to bring back with us. Usually we only get 40 pounders at this time of year.”
The water was 360 feet deep and there was a strong rip tide in the area they were fishing in, which meant they only had about a 45-minute window to fish in, Workman said. They had been fishing for about a half hour and had boated two smaller halibut — one about 80 pounds and the other about 35 — when the big one hit.
“The tide was ripping too much and we were almost ready to pull up and leave,” Workman said. “I hooked it and it didn’t feel like a whole lot on the end of the hook at first. I could feel it wriggling a little bit.”
After about 15 minutes later, though, Workman could tell he had hooked a big fish.
“It was taking a guy to help hold the pole to keep it from hitting the side of the boat,” Workman said. “I caught it in 360 feet of water and it spooled me right back to the backing line, which was probably 450 feet of line.”
It took Workman about 45 minutes of pumping and reeling to get the fish to the surface.
“We got him to the top and we tried to hit it with a harpoon but the harpoon didn’t go through the thick skin and then he went all the way to the bottom again,” Workman said.
That’s when Workman handed the rod to Bergman, who spent the next 45 minutes reeling the fish to the surface again. This time, they were able to successfully harpoon it. It took all seven men aboard to get the fish onto the boat.
“Once we had it laying on the side of the boat everybody was pretty surprised,” Workman said. “It was huge. It was like a monster beneath the sea.”
The fish measured 89 3/4 inches, which according to the Department of Fish and Game’s length-weight chart put the fish somewhere in the neighborhood of 405 pounds. They never were able to weigh it on a scale.
Coincidentally, it was the same hole that another Slayden employee, Dan Beckley of North Pole, caught a 338-pound halibut on Aug. 31.
The fact that Workman caught the fish this late in the year is a surprise, Tracy said.
“Halibut migrate into deeper water in the winter months,” he said, noting that the commercial fishery closes in mid-November to protect halibut in the spawning cycle. “Generally when you get into late November it’s tough to find halibut.”
The deer hunting on Kodiak was OK but it wasn’t great due to lack of snow that allowed the deer to remain at higher elevations, Workman said.
Even so, with the three halibut they caught and nine deer they shot, each man brought home more than 100 pounds of meat, about half of which was halibut and half of which was deer, Workman said.
“We brought back about 630 pounds all together,” he said. “Alaska Airlines loved us.”
Contact outdoors editor Tim Mowry at 459-7587.
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