World Record Atlantic Halibut Caught Off Cape Cod

Till not too long ago, Alexandra Spring held 9 IGFA world information for pink snapper and gag grouper. However the tenth—a 33-pound, 14-ounce Atlantic halibut—she caught by chance.

On July 22, throughout a tuna journey off Cape Cod with Captain Ian Leonard, Spring hooked a fish which, in her personal phrases, “felt like reeling in a door from the underside of the ocean.” Spring has made an annual pilgrimage from Florida to Cape Cod together with her fiancee and angling accomplice, CJ Peppe, for the previous 3 summers. She first met Leonard at Florida Atlantic College in Boca Raton again in 2014, however after graduating, Leonard relocated from Naples, Florida, to Orleans, Massachusetts. Now, the three of them set up fishing journeys of their respective residence waters annually.

Throughout her previous few journeys on Cape Cod, Spring has loved exploring Southern New England’s inshore scene, particularly chasing striped bass on the fly. Nevertheless, sea circumstances on July twenty second have been prime for a bluefin hunt east of Cape, so that they did simply that.

Upon reaching their plotted location, they started marking bluefin on their electronics and proceeded to set out strains to fish stay bait. However Spring, who’s accustomed to reef fishing with slow-pitch and butterfly jigs within the Gulf of Mexico, admittedly couldn’t naked to play the bait-and-wait sport. Antsy for some motion, she employed an ultralight slow-pitch jigging setup and tied on an A87 diamond jig with a inexperienced tube. After quarter-hour of jigging and drifting, she thought her jig had snagged a ledge. Nevertheless, when Spring lifted the rod there was some motion on the opposite finish. “I hit it with a second hookset for good measure and felt the pinnacle shakes, after which the rod loaded to the deal with,” Spring mentioned. The trio rapidly realized she may need hooked a halibut.

“It was like reeling in a 2×4,” Spring continued, “there was simply regular, useless weight.” Because the fish approached the floor, it noticed the underside of the hull and began operating like loopy, taking again the road she had simply gained. Ultimately, she was in a position to winch it again up they usually introduced the fish on board, nonetheless unaware that Spring had seemingly damaged an IGFA line-class report for the highly effective flatfish.

“We stored the fish, and my fiancee, who loves trying up random information, observed that it might have topped the IGFA’s girls’s Atlantic halibut report within the 20-pound line class, which is what we thought the reel was spooled with,” Spring mentioned. Upon submitting particular lengths of line and chief materials, in addition to the diamond jig to the IGFA, the braided line examined for 30-pounds of breaking power. Regardless that the road was heavier than she thought, Spring’s practically 34-pound halibut bested the earlier 30-pound line class world report, which was caught in Greenland throughout the Nineteen Eighties. Her catch was only in the near past licensed by the IGFA.

“We had a visit to Alaska to focus on Pacific halibut scheduled just some weeks after our journey to Massachusetts; little did I do know that I’d catch my first-ever halibut within the Northeast,” Spring laughed.

When requested what’s subsequent on the bucket checklist, she replied, “My fiancee and I share the objective of catching a fish in every of the 50 states.” That’s plenty of floor to cowl, however there are many alternatives to search out an eleventh world report within the course of.

» IGFA Atlantic Halibut Information

» Comply with Alexandra Spring on Instagram 

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