Flatfish on the Fly

Of all places for the idea to strike me was the lounge area at the Millennium Hotel in Anchorage Alaska. Each one of my fly fishing pilgrimages to the great Northland for salmon and trout hasn't officially begun until I am seated at a table in the Millenium savoring a basket of mouth watering halibut chunks and enjoying a couple of ice cold Alaskan Ambers. It has become a tradition for me, and this time I didn’t wait for my fishing buddy’s flight to arrive before indulging myself.

The culinary pleasure I was experiencing must have been obvious since the guy sitting one table over turned to me and said, “Those chunks are pretty good, aren’t they?”

“The best”, I replied, “I wait all year for this. And the brew just hits the spot.”

Then this fellow proceeds to tell me that he is up there to do some halibut fishing -not unusual for the time of year. But what was a bit out of the ordinary was that he was doing his halibut fishing with a fly rod! That grabbed my attention. Another order of chunks and another Amber and I was all ears! This guy proceeds to tell me that he has caught halibut on the fly up to about fifty pounds but wanted to break the one hundred pound mark on this trip and see if he just might achieve a new tippet class world record. Now I am thinking if big fluke are doormats, then large halibut are the barn doors, and it would be quite a feat to land one on the long wand. The largest fly rod halibut on record is currently one hundred and eleven pounds – one mighty large flatfish!

I listened to my new acquaintance tell me how the big flatfish lie in wait on the bottom camoflauged by their speckled brown topside and white underbelly and how they will travel up the water column to pursue a wide range of prey. While they spend most of their time in deep water they can often be found in the shallows but a few meters deep. Sound familiar? Well it should because the habits of halibut are likewise displayed by its diminutive cousin, the fluke.
I wished this fellow well in his quest, my fishing buddy finally arrived and more halibut chunks and Amber had been ordered, but the seed had been planted. I took the concept back to my home waters of the Long Island Sound and have since had a ton of fun with fluke on the fly.