THE ULTIMATE ANGLING BUCKET LIST

As I recall, the first one was taken accidentally back in the 1960's out from Wick, prompting a few early
pioneers to start deliberately fishing for them with large pirks from Scrabster and Thurso in the Pentland
Firth, and more especially, around the southern islands of the Orkney's, in particular Hoy just across the
way.
A wild unforgiving area even in good conditions. But generous in other ways, as a steady, though not
numerically significant stream of big halibut started to reward those willing to put the effort in.
Flipping all of that on its head, the largest halibut I ever saw caught was a 167 pounder which picked
up a static bait intended for common skate up around Dury Voe in Shetland back in 1974. And while a
few more specimens continued to make the news, it wasn't long after that when things started to go
quiet and eventually slip off the radar.
The odd one still gets caught in Scottish waters, though invariably by accident rather than intention.
The last one I heard of was in 1997. A fish of a hundred and eighty pounds taken from the tide race off
the Point of Stoer up on the west coast.
Not every halibut however gets caught in Scotland, and nor do they all date back to the 1990's and
beyond.
I've mentioned already that I have spent time out
from Hartlepool aboard the fly shooter 'Adaptable',
which involved the towing of a net attached to very
long warps with are formed into big arcs by sailing
in a huge circle. The basic idea is that as the boat
sails away from the net in the middle of the circle,
the warps are drawn closer together herding the fish
up into a lane which the net then drags along
sweeping them all up.
We were out there catching amongst other things
greater forkbeards, witches, and long rough dabs,
and on a couple of hauls, small halibut also found
themselves on the deck. So I decided to follow this
up, and it turns out that the commercial boats pick
them up fairly regularly within just a few miles of
the shore all through the summer, with the angling
boats also seeing an odd one or two while lure
fishing for cod
The story however doesn't end there, because in
2014 I went over to Whitby to do a feature for Sea
Angler Magazine aboard Paul Kilpatrick's 'Sea
Barry Kemper, Whitby Halibut 53 pounds Otter 2', and Paul provided me with a picture of a
halibut one of his clients, Barry Kemper, had
boated just a few weeks earlier, which tipped the scales at fifty three pounds, and was far from being
the first either Paul or Whitby had seen in recent years.
In fact, they now actually expect to catch a few each year. Not to the point where you would go out and
deliberately target them, otherwise you might be there trying all season. But there are most definitely
things which can be done to improve the chances of contacting one.
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