NOW, THAT'S A KEEPER!

By Juan Montoya
When I tell my friends of the size of the fish and snow crabs they catch in Alaska off the coast of British Columbia, Canada, they are clearly  skeptical.
A halibut is a fish that resembles our Gulf of Mexico flounder but is multiplied in weight by a scale of 100 pounds to one. Some have been caught that weighed from 600 to 700 pounds or more.
At first it was hard to believe that these monsters live in deep cold water off the coast of Alaska, but these men working for a fish processing plant had to use an industrial forklift to pack it in ice. To those of us accustomed to catching flounder in the bay, the size of the Alaskan halibut is staggering. Processors used to cut the head off and use the rest of the fish until they noticed that their workers – many from the Mexican west coast – were taking them home and making a delicious ceviche from the meat. They caught on and stopped throwing them away after that.
Many sports fishermen travel the ferries plying the waters of the Maritime Highway or jump aboard an Air Alaska plane to fish off Petersburg, Alaska. They than have their guides ship their fish to their hometowns.
Wouldn't you travel there if you had a chance to hook one of these behemoths?