World Record Atlantic Halibut Caught Off Cape Cod
Until recently, Alexandra Spring held nine IGFA world records for red snapper and gag grouper. But the tenth—a 33-pound, 14-ounce Atlantic halibut—she caught by accident.
On July 22, during a tuna trip off Cape Cod with Captain Ian Leonard, Spring hooked a fish which, in her own words, “felt like reeling in a door from the bottom of the ocean.” Spring has made an annual pilgrimage from Florida to Cape Cod with her fiancee and angling partner, CJ Peppe, for the past 3 summers. She first met Leonard at Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton back in 2014, but after graduating, Leonard relocated from Naples, Florida, to Orleans, Massachusetts. Now, the three of them organize fishing trips in their respective home waters each year.
During her past few trips on Cape Cod, Spring has enjoyed exploring Southern New England’s inshore scene, namely chasing striped bass on the fly. However, sea conditions on July 22nd were prime for a bluefin hunt east of Cape, so they did just that.
Upon reaching their plotted location, they began marking bluefin on their electronics and proceeded to set out lines to fish live bait. But Spring, who is accustomed to reef fishing with slow-pitch and butterfly jigs in the Gulf of Mexico, admittedly couldn’t bare to play the bait-and-wait game. Antsy for some action, she employed an ultralight slow-pitch jigging setup and tied on an A87 diamond jig with a green tube. After 15 minutes of jigging and drifting, she thought her jig had snagged a ledge. However, when Spring lifted the rod there was some movement on the other end. “I hit it with a second hookset for good measure and felt the head shakes, and then the rod loaded to the handle,” Spring said. The trio quickly realized she might have hooked a halibut.
“It was like reeling in a 2×4,” Spring continued, “there was just steady, dead weight.” As the fish approached the surface, it saw the bottom of the hull and started running like crazy, taking back the line she had just gained. Eventually, she was able to winch it back up and they brought the fish on board, still unaware that Spring had likely broken an IGFA line-class record for the powerful flatfish.
“We kept the fish, and my fiancee, who loves looking up random records, noticed that it would have topped the IGFA’s women’s Atlantic halibut record in the 20-pound line class, which is what we thought the reel was spooled with,” Spring said. Upon submitting specific lengths of line and leader material, as well as the diamond jig to the IGFA, the braided line tested for 30-pounds of breaking strength. Even though the line was heavier than she thought, Spring’s nearly 34-pound halibut bested the previous 30-pound line class world record, which was caught in Greenland during the 1980s. Her catch was just recently certified by the IGFA.
“We had a trip to Alaska to target Pacific halibut scheduled just a few weeks after our trip to Massachusetts; little did I know that I’d catch my first-ever halibut in the Northeast,” Spring laughed.
When asked what’s next on the bucket list, she replied, “My fiancee and I share the goal of catching a fish in each of the 50 states.” That’s a lot of ground to cover, but there are plenty of opportunities to find an eleventh world record in the process.
» IGFA Atlantic Halibut Records
» Follow Alexandra Spring on Instagram
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Source: https://onthewater.com/world-record-atlantic-halibut-caught-off-cape-cod
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