SLAB CAMP HAS been relocated.
No longer does it reside south of Sequim in the foothills of the Olympic Mountains.
Rather, it’s been moved to the eastern Strait of Juan de Fuca; a place that’s spitting out “slabs” at a dizzying rate these days.
“I’ve lived here all my life, and I’ve never seen that many fish coming in,” said longtime state fish checker Larry Bennett, who counted 415 halibut for 452 boats last week alone.
“The halibut fishing has just been crazy out there. I just think there’s a lot of fish around this year.”
And a lot of them are sizeable.
None more so than Ryley Fee’s Saturday afternoon delight.
The 37-year-old Woodinville native pulled in a 75-inch beast (yes, a 6-foot-3 fish) near Protection Island.
It came on the last drift of the last day of a three-day halibut trip on the North Olympic Peninsula.
As Fee put it, “It was a true ninth-inning fish.
“It was literally the last minutes of our day,” said Fee, estimating that the bite came around 1 p.m. “It pays off to stay out and put in your hours.
“I’ve found that to be the case in a lot of different fisheries.”
The fish wasn’t even supposed to be Fee’s.
Having already hooked a 30-pound halibut, Fee promised the next fish to Marv Fleming of Bellevue.
Things changed as soon as the barn door flatty took a hold of Fee’s setup (classic hoochie and herring).
“After I did a few big pump and reels, [I looked over at Marv and] he just said ‘No thanks,'” Fee said.
Fee certainly had the piscatorial chops to handle the situation.
A veteran angler and outdoors writer, he had caught fish this size while fishing for 200-plus-pound tarpon near Nicaragua.
This was the first time, however, he’d come across anything of such a magnitude in Washington state.
After 12 minutes of fighting the mammoth fish, Fee and his boatmates (Marv and Brian Fleming) finally caught sight of it.
“It was pretty amazing,” Fee said. “I could see it was pretty big when I first hooked it. You think maybe 100, 120 [pounds] or something like that.
“Then we looked down in the water, and it looked like a 7-by-9 Karastan carpet.
“Then the gravity of the situation came over us. Then we had to go into a mode of how we’re going to land this fish.”
The force of the fish had put an incredible burden on Fee’s rod, bought weeks beforehand at a garage sale.
“The reel almost fell off,” he said. “The screws were backing out as I reeled this fish up. Towards the end I was on my knees on the deck of the boat.
“I insisted on [reeling] myself.”
Of course, Fee had a little help from his friends as well.
A newbie to the harpoon scene, Brian stuck the fish right on target with his makeshift harpoon. This with a harpoon he had made just one week before the trip.
The beast took off immediately, bringing the buoy underwater with it.
“It was like ‘Jaws,'” Fee said.
Once they got the fish back up to the top of the water again, the two Flemings gaffed it, Fee popped it between the eyes with his .45 and they all pulled it into the boat.
“She basically almost landed right on top of us, and then we got out of the way . . . because you never know,” Fee said.
All told, the fight lasted approximately 20 minutes, Fee said.
Not bad for a fish that, according to the halibut weight/length chart on piscatorialpursuits.com, weighed 225 pounds.
That makes it one of three 200-plus-pound fish reported to have been caught in Marine Area 6 (eastern Strait) in the last year.
Strangely enough, all three were caught near Protection Island.
Ray Frederick of Silverdale caught an 81-inch fish during the first week of May 2009. Then Mike Mollison of Bremerton caught a 76 ½-inch bruiser two weeks later.
The last time an angler reported catching a flatty of the same magnitude prior to that was in 2006 (Sequim’s Dan Schleve hooked a 78-inch fish).
Shrimp news
Don’t expect any more spot shrimping dates out of Hood Canal this spring.
State biologist Mark O’Toole estimated that harvesters will fall about 2,000 pounds short of the Canal’s recreational quota after Wednesday’s final harvest date.
While that is a surplus, it won’t be enough to justify another date given that shrimpers exceeded 17,000 pounds during each of the first three openers.
“Fishing has been really good this year,” O’Toole said of Hood Canal. “Last Wednesday 85 percent of the boats limited, which may be a record.”
One fishery that will open to additional dates is the Discovery Bay shrimp district.
The shrimp district, which had been closed to shrimping since 2005, will open May 20 and 22 from 7 a.m. to 3 p.m.
Harvesters have averaged 144 prawns per boat so far in Discovery Bay. The only problem is the size (18.7 prawns per pound),
And that is a cause for concern, O’Toole said, adding that any more Discovery Bay openers after the May 22 harvest would “need discussion.”
“We were a little on the fence about opening this year to begin with because of the relative lack of larger females in the preseason test fishery catches,” O’Toole said.
“But [we] decided to try opening it at least for a few days to see what would show up in the fishery.”
Also done for the year is the Marine Area 9 (Admiralty Inlet) fishery.
________
Matt Schubert is the outdoors and sports columnist for the Peninsula Daily News. His column regularly appears on Thursdays and Fridays. He can be reached at matt.schubert@peninsuladailynews.com.
