In the years after dog mushing all winter up above the arctic circle and later full-time homesteading here on Kodiak Island, I needed some off-season adventurous income to compliment my salmon-filled summers. Along with working construction and traveling, I also found my self in the spring and fall on deck of commercial halibut fishing boats. For five seasons, I longlined for these beautiful but ugly halibut. While we are offering halibut for sale now through our partnership with Grace Allen of Graceful Fisheries, I find myself reminiscing about the days of halibut trips and adventures. Here’s the story of my best day fishing, the toll it took on my body, a recipe I enjoy, and a little video to cap it all off.

The Biggest Day

The boat loaded for a different fishery where I would do tanner crabs in Jan/Feb, then a break, and we’d switch over to halibut in March/April

It took a few years of fishing on boats to land a more lucrative job on a bigger boat, and on the Miss Linda we took her 68 feet of steel 60 miles off shore to fish the deep. Typically we would leave in the afternoon and drive all night, taking wheel watches until we reached the grounds at 4 am. From there it was fast, high-intensity setting tub gear off the stern, 10 tubs to a string, hoping the 4 days we had spent baiting 80-100 tubs were going to be a home run. After our sweat cooled and we went inside to get some water and a snack we would get a couple hour nap and breakfast before we started hauling gear. Everyone on the 4-man deck had their station and mine was as a gutter since I had previous experience. It is an art form to direct your razor sharp knife to remove the gills and viscera all in a clean movement, the smoother, the faster, the more efficient, the safer. As I write this, reliving those memories, I can still see the checkerboards filling up fast as we gutted non stop all day and then through the night as we motored back to town with our 33,000 pounds of very fresh, then very cold, gutted iced halibut in the belly of the boat. After getting a couple hours of sleep we had worked nonstop but for a meal (I remember a cup of noodles and sandwiches) on deck in bloody rain gear and the smell of halibut, which is in part the smell of success.

I had been awake for long periods of time for the Iditarod, but this was a different sleepless animal. Instead of being very cold and fighting boredom watching slow monotonous mile after mile of frozen trail and dog butts, this was hard charging work. It was easy for the hours to slip on by while balancing against the roll of the ocean with the dull roar of the motor and the stack of exhaust over head and rock n roll as background noise. With so much repetition at the gutting station, certain body parts get sore and painful. My middle finger and pointer were the ones that I would use to reach into the halibut to pop the gonads out time and time again. We were working on 15-pound fish, over the legal length but not by much, so divide 33,000 pounds by 15-pound fish and you get A LOT of fish to gut NOW. The middle finger said good bye to its finger nail after that one trip, sacrificed for the $15,000 crew share I received for that one day of fishing. Granted, there were weeks leading up to that one halibut trip of unpaid hourly labor, and more fishing after that trip before salmon season, but you get the idea. Halibut holds a special place in my heart for harvest of the ocean’s bounty out of sight of land, for the camaraderie of the crew and a different way to see and experience the globe we live in.

And now for one of my nostalgic favorite ways to cook halibut. If we catch one for sport during the summer, I like to make this recipe and serve piping hot for crew and friends…

Beer Battered Deep Fried Halibut

Ingredients:

Halibut, cut into 1” wide strips or chunks

1 and 1/2 cups all purpose flour (divided)

1 tsp baking powder

1 tsp salt

1/4 tsp garlic powder

1/2 tsp paprika

1/4 tsp black pepper

12 oz cheap beer

Oil for frying

Method:

Pat halibut with paper towel to remove moisture. Dredge halibut in 1/2 cup of flour. Then mix 1 cup remaining flour and other dry ingredients. Whisk in beer until combined - lumps are OK. Shake excess flour off halibut, dip into batter, fry fish in oil around 375 until browned, turning pieces over as they get golden brown.

Or do it the really cheap and fast way (sometimes as fishermen faster is the only way) by making a thick Bisquick batter, dredging halibut in mixture, and deep frying.

Don’t forget to serve with tartar sauce!

Halibut Video

I don’t have a lot of pictures of videos from the halibut days - this was before we had even dreamed up our Soul Mate Salmon business - but I thought our friends at the Alaska Seafood Marketing Institute did a great job with this quick little video on halibut. Enjoy!

Tollef's top halibut day