Barbary Coast Dive Club Newsletter
Page 3

Recent Dive Club Adventures

Hunting for Halibut in Monterey

by Curt Haney

Carol and I heard that halibut were being caught in Monterey so we headed down on Sunday the 1st of August to try our luck. We spent Saturday night at a friend's house that lives almost on Del Monte beach in Monterey, so the next morning we didn't have far to go.

We were on the beach at 9 AM and paddled out in front of the Holiday Inn to a kelp bed just off shore. We tied off to the kelp and Carol had a high pressure leak so she had to abandon her dive and just free dived. I went ahead and solo dived the area and discovered an interesting ledge shale bottom scattered with sand and a kelp forest. The visibility was 30 to 40 feet and the water temp was 58 degrees.

California Halibut

• Range: Baja California to central Oregon

• Preferred Depth:
  Less than 125 feet

• Lifespan: Males mature in 3 years, females in 5 years

• Spawning Time: Feb - July

• Favorite Feed: anchovies, sardines, and other small fish

I swam about 10 feet off the bottom looking for the well-camouflaged halibut for about 30 minutes and saw nothing! I decided to shoot a few rock fish for dinner and got four nice ones and was about three quarters of the way through my dive when I swam right over a nice sized halibut! It was lying flat on a gravel and sand covered bottom and was perfectly camouflaged, so well that I almost missed it. I hovered above it, set the gun on high power and angled the shaft to enter just behind the gills and toward the tail. I took aim and fired It was a perfect shot and the massive fish took off for deeper water. It went to the end of my coil lanyard and tried to rip my gun from my grasp, but didn't. I pulled it back to me and struggled to get it on my stringer; it fought harder than any ling I ever landed.

I surfaced and got Carol's attention and she paddled over and assisted me with loading it onto the boat. Carol then took my regulator and made her dive while I rested on the kayak. She shot a couple nice rock fish but saw no halibut. We paddled back in to the beach, borrowed a regulator and had lunch. The halibut measured out at 33 inches, just over 14 pounds.

On the second dive we paddled out to the buoy in what we thought was about 60 feet of water. We dropped anchor, entered the water and hovered 10 feet off the bottom at 70 feet. (continued on page 4)