37 Lb. Halibut Taken With Pole Spear Santa Cruz Island Channel Islands, CA James Owens, Pacifica, CA February 14, 2005

Thought you might be interested in this one.

I was Scuba diving aboard the Peace boat out of Ventura, CA, on a 3 day lobster trip. We had been out for 2 days, with a good catch of lobster and fish so far.

I woke on day 3 to the word that our first dive would be deep - at an area known as Cables on the backside of Santa Cruz Island. The Captain put us onto this island looking reef that was maybe 50 yards across and 65ft deep. I swam across the reef to the other side and turned to circle around when, right at the edge where the reef met the sandy bottom, lay the outline of a BIG flattie.

I realized that all I had was this pole spear and this fish had some SIZE, but I had to try. My adrenaline started going, a second passed, and I just took the shot. My spear launched straight through it, right behind the gill plate of the halibut's head. He swam up off the bottom a few feet, flapping and going crazy, and I just held on, halibut rodeo! I stayed on top of the fish and drove it back down where I pinned it to the sand with the spear and my knees. After a few attempts to kill the fish with my dive knife, I finally had to rip his gills out to end it. Man, these are tough fish!

I had no choice but to leave the spear tip in the fish and drag it around like this. I looked at my remaining air pressure and bottom time and saw that I still had time left. I continued on, looking for lobster, and within a few minutes, managed to find and pull a decent lobster out of a hole in a rock with one hand, get him into my bag, while holding onto the halibut in the other hand. You could say I had my hands full....so I decided to make my way up. The visibility and ascent were unreal, looking up 50 feet in deep blue water, with the sun filtering through the leaves of the kelp that swayed with the ocean currents, a very calming vision after this crazy hunt at sea.

When I hit surface, I was about 50 feet from the boat, and almost immediately, I could see people on the boat looking to see what I had. On the deck, I hoisted him up for measurement - 37 pounds, and easily 4 feet long. The pictures showed the battle, notice the bent spear tips...

Back on land - we figured maybe I had a record fish? Impressively enough, the current DFG record is 72 pounds, from the same island back in August of 1982 by William Skwarlo using scuba. I'm not sure of the method of take - so who knows, maybe a pole spear record if nothing else....plus, that was last century.

Needless to say, that was definitely the catch of my lifetime.