Halibut Pistol
“He hasn't much faith.”
“No,” the old man said. “But we have. Haven't we?”
“Eighty feet down is where they will be,” said Roy.
“How will I know when I have one on the line?” I asked.
“A barn door - you'll know,” Roy replied, broadening his arms as wide as he could. “That’s what it will feel like.”
“Let me grab my halibut pistol for you.”
I looked at the stout black halibut rod with a green braided fishing line as I waited. My third day in Alaska and the 18’ skiff was loaded with two rods, a cooler with lunch, a bag of salmon guts from the previous day’s catch that we'd use as bait on today’s outing.
“I let someone borrow my halibut pistol. You'll just have to use this harpoon. Stab it right through the gill plate and tie it off on a cleat, let it bleed out,” he said.
“So harpoon it as soon as I can?”
“Yep. And don't bring it in the boat too soon. It will flail around and knock your kids out of the boat, especially if it's a big one.”
I pulled the starter cord of the 20 HP Honda outboard, and we headed east, out of the inlet, into the bay, and toward the ocean. A new experience for the four of us; me, my wife, and two kids — eight and ten years old. Motoring out into Marmot Bay, I imagined the motor failing and the course of events if we drifted forever into the Gulf of Alaska.
Soon zig-zagging around the bay comfortably, we caught glimpses of otters, a waterfall, deer swimming. And when we felt like it, we stopped to fish. It was unguided, and my kids were young.
Reckless? Or was it faith?
Into the unknown and new. Into uncertainty. Going for hours, days, years, and coming home empty-handed. That requires faith.
Skewering the guts with the hook, I thought about how little I Googled this trip. Endless choices tend to cloud our notion of what's possible. If I had entered the search terms “best bait for halibut” or “should I take my kids out on a boat on my 1st trip to AK?” I probably would not be on this particular skiff on this particular day.
Choices outcompete our faith.
Decision fatigue. Decision paralysis. Try to calculate all possible outcomes and you’ll probably decide to stay home. Maybe choose a canned hunt.
In the end, Hemingway’s old man could have stayed home, but wouldn’t have, even if he knew how it ended.
Faith that it will happen, work out. That when the bait drops into the salty water and sinks 85 feet and I jig it for 35 minutes, that a fish will bite.
“I feel something,” I exclaimed. A peck, peck, pecking transferred up through the unforgiving braided line like an electric shock, into my hands, through my forearm, shoulder, neck, into my primal brain, and ultimately my soul.
The same feeling when I chase deer. It’s the faith that feeds me through the hopelessness of the chase, but then steps aside for instinct, a singular focus on the kill.
It’s unfathomable to consider the chance of events that must coalesce for me and this fish to meet. When it hatched, I was 26 and neither of my children were born yet. Three days prior, I was 5,400 miles away in New England’s only land-locked state, and the halibut was somewhere in the Gulf of Alaska.
The heavily used reel squeaks with each rotation. She’s stuck on this rod and getting closer. “Get the harpoon ready.”
His dark side is up when he's next to the boat. I torpedo the harpoon through his gill plate and tie it off on a cleat of the bow. We're drifting together, his blood nearly indistinct from the dark, unforgiving blue lapping against the aluminum hull.
“What do we do next?” one of my kids asks.
“Bring it in the boat. What else would we do?”
"The Old Man and the Sea" is the greatest book ever written. This story reminds me of the time I camped alone at the mouth of Glacier Bay and was awakened by the sound of a gun. I looked out the tent to see a little skiff pulling in a big halibut and I sleepily thought, "I bet they never make the mistake of shooting the fish once it's in the boat."
Totally engrossed! I assume it grilled up nicely.