Fished outside the harbor this morning. I Checked out the big ship...its not the same one that was there last week. Anyways, first fish was a sculpin...released. Next was a 18-20 inch also halibut, released. Next came a strong bulldogging fish that didn't want to come up. It made 2 slow but powerful runs back down to the bottom before I saw it. I thought I had a legal butt on, but it turned out to be a baby black sea bass. This was the first one of these I've caught. I'd saw it was about 8 or 10 pounds. A surprizingly pretty fish. Although I only lip hooked him, he proceed to roll belly up and lay still in the water. I tried to revive him for about 15 minutes, but he didn't even try to swim. Eventually I got enough O2 into him and he tried to swim away. But he bobbed back up. Now that I had woken him up, he was bobbing like a cork! I picked him up and stabbed him in the gut. Lightly rubbed his stomach to get some air out. Revived him some more and sent him off again. As he swam away...little bubbles came out of the tiny hole I made. I think he made it.

Next was a smashing strike. I short stroked the fish up a couple times, but he made short runs down to the bottom. Sound familiar?
I got him up and it turned out to be a about a 15 pound halibut. For some reason I completely lost my cool and took a truly crappy swipe at him with the net...somehow forgetting the rules of netting fish that are too big to go into the net sideways. Well that pissed him off and he made a magnificent run that ended up breaking me off of 15 pound test maxima. Released <cough>. We got the butts 2 weeks ago...I suppose that it was Mr. Big Flatty's turn to win today. I hold no grudge...hehe.