|
 John Davis of Troop 519 caught a giant halibut over 130 lbs. It was nearly 4’ wide. Danny Dailey harpooned the fish.
What is a shooter?
Some 30 or 40 miles from port, Danny found a fishing hot spot where the bottom rises from 600' to only 150' in depth. They dropped the baits—one pound lead balls with massive hooks baited with fish. John immediately got a bite. Then he thought that he had hung the bottom. Then, they thought that they had hooked a huge skate. John kept fighting the fish. Finally when it surfaced, it was a giant halibut. A halibut looks like a flounder on steroids. This one was over 130 Ibs. and nearly 4' wide. “My dad tried to get pictures of it in the water but all you could see was waves of water covering Danny and me,” said John.
Danny harpooned the fish. The special harpoon has a rope attached to the barb. The other end is tied to the boat. “It really went crazy then,” said Danny. Danny shot the fish with a shotgun. Any boats in the vicinity will ease over to see what you have if they hear a shot because they know that you have caught a “shooter.”
Fish this large are powerful and dangerous. One man fishing alone pulled one into the boat with him. It broke his leg and killed him. The man and the fish were found adrift in the boat 3 days later.
Alaskan waters are treacherous. The water temperatures are such that survival time before hypothermia is only 15 to 40 minutes. Jagged rocks come up from the bottom to just above the surface—and worse—to just below the surface.
We heard maydays on two consecutive days. The first was a simple but panicked “going down. Mayday! Mayday, going down!” Followed by silence
The next was an urgent “going down near (?) island” repeated twice, then silence.
The Alaskan Coast Guard is dedicated. They really pursued the distress calls— but if you go down without a trace....these waters are unforgiving.
The boys then drove 4500 to 5000 miles practically nonstop taking turns driving. There were caribou and elk and mosquitoes, (the Alaskan state bird)
Sometimes we had to stop every hour and a half to clean the windshield. The bumper had a 3/8" coating of plastered mosquitoes. A dictionary of yachting terms once described a porthole as a round window in the side of a boat which admits sunlight-air-seawater and large numbers of mosquitoes except in Alaska where they are too large to gain entrance by that route.
Danny logged sufficient hours piloting the boat to be eligible to take the Coast Guard test for a ship’s captain. John is taking his airplane pilot’s licensing test.
What will they do next summer?
Both boys are eagle scouts attending Bob Jones University.
Danny is the son of Dick Dailey, ex drill instructor and survival expert. John Davis is the son of Dr. Jack Davis, dentist, adventurer and conservative journalist.
|
