So...did anyone hook the mystery beast?

We can add our own chapter to the tale, kind of, I guess.

On Saturday after a long day of fishing, starting in Anacortes, fishing out around the outside of Orcas, out to Stuart Island, inside of San Juan Island, thru Cattle Pass, around Lopez, and then back up Rosario Strait to Washington Park, we ran into our own mystery fish.

We pulled over to make a couple of quick drops between Burrows and Allan Islands. My buddy Addicted was using a 6' heavy action rod, a big reel loaded with 65# PowerPro, and a 6oz. leadhead.

He was fishing to round out our lingcod limit, but had broken off his lighter lingcod rod at Lopez so picked up his light halibut jigging rod to finish off the day with.

65 FOW, he drops...I'm on the motor since the current is ripping along pretty good. Hits the bottom, bounce, bounce, and hung up. A couple of quick yanks and nothing happens, so I begin to motor upstream to get above his jig, and then it takes off...screams off, really.

I had to keep the boat at 10-12 knots to just to keep up with it, and quite a bit faster to gain line.

It would rip fast, then sit down and we would catch up and get above it...it would sulk a bit and then take off hauling ass.

At one point we got it into 30 FOW and were right on top of it...starting pulling up hard and it bailed out to deep water and we were back in 75 FOW in about two minutes, and on the chase again.

A little bit later we followed it into another shallow flat, got into 30 FOW a second time and were right on top of it, pulling straight up...and we may have been gaining a bit of line, or at least we thought we were...and the 65# braid broke off.

This took a bit over 20 minutes and while the fish did a couple of turns of just hanging out and not being budged, most the time it was swimming fast and I had to be in pursuit or it would have cleaned out his reel in a minute or two.

I'm guessing big halibut in that area, but since we never got to see it I guess we'll never know.

Thoughts?

Fish on...

Todd