Fishing counts as sport right?

I went fishing with my BIL, FIL and my kids school Principle this last Firday. A buddy of mine is a chater guide and I got a fishing trip at a school auction and cashed in on it last Friday. The weather was perfect, sunny, warm and flat calm. We went out about 30-40 miles from here to the outside of Prince Of Whales Island (open ocean on the southeastern tip of Alaska) to go try and get som Halibut. The fish were keeping us too busy for me to take many pictures, here are some of them....

My FIL reeling in one....

maybe it doesnt count as a sport?

holy crap!! those are some large fish. Nice photos.

those are flounders right?

dang! that Red Snapper has awesome color, but man, what the heck is that monster that is bigger than you?? thats crazy...

Nice photos. Those are Halibut, not flounder.

close enough, same family, flatfish.

how deep are the waters? I spearfish and I won't have the guts to shoot something that big?

We were fishing in 280 feet with 4 lbs of weight (for those people who fish, yes that really is 4 freaking pounds!)

They are halibut and they are (accourding to the fish and game people) born females then change gender somehow sometime, they are also born with eyes on opposite sides of thier body and they swim vertically like "normal fish" and then their eyes, shortly and rather quickly form what I can gather, migrate to the same side and they start swimming with their white side down.

The camera was an Olympus waterproof POS camera. I bought it for my wife and for trips like this since I live in a rainforest and my wife is tech challenged. She loves it BTW and I am very happy with it as well! I still like my regular set up but this is nice in a pinch or in the rain or hiking!

BTW, the first picture with my FIL trying to get that fish in was only about a 40 pounder. See how bent the pole is. Imagine the 240 pounder I brought up. Byt the time I got to my last one of 150 lbs my arms were burning!

superdiver wrote in post #6333508
maybe it doesnt count as a sport?

It IS commonly known as SPORTfishing.

great job

wow.. great shots.
I dont think i'd want to be in the water with those monsters!

dmmiller wrote in post #6335750
wow.. great shots.
I dont think i'd want to be in the water with those monsters!

Actually the guide I went with wants to take me to a spot he knows where fish close to this size are at about 30 feet deep and wants me to dive and spear fish them. I have done quite a bit of spear fishing and he wants to learn to spear fish.

Now, I have never spear fished halibut, but have some friends who come up here annually to do it and they have discribed their tech that they learned from trial and error, mostly error it sounds like..lol

But I really want to try it.

Fish on the school cafeteria menu for the next month.

Superdiver, my apologies for pinching your title for my post. Nice shots. And, holy crap that is a giant Halibut. How do you get something like that on board, a winch?