A bunch of Quebec anglers hooked into a big halibut on Sunday that weighed over 100 kilos. With the help of two completely different fishermen, Rémi and Mathieu Aubin landed the fish after a four-hour battle. Nonetheless first, they wanted to widen the opening they’d decrease. It’s an image that many hard-water anglers would have a tricky time wrapping their minds spherical: pulling a 109-pound Atlantic halibut by means of the ice.
U.S. anglers generally chase Pacific halibut alongside the northern reaches of the West Coast — notably in Alaskan waters. We’re in a position to even aim Atlantic halibut off the coast of Maine, which holds a brief sportfishing season in Might and June. We’re in a position to moreover fish for a bounty of freshwater species in the middle of the winter, when the ice on our native lakes will get thick ample. However, there are just a few places, notably in North America, the place it’s possible you’ll ice fish for the world’s largest flatfish.
One in every of these areas is Saguenay Fjord throughout the Saguenay-Lac-Saint-Jean space of Quebec. It’s the place a giant freshwater river, the Riviére Saguenay, meets the St. Lawrence River as a result of it varieties a slim, deep inlet throughout the Gulf of St. Lawrence. This creates a singular fishery the place the current water from the river flows over the salty water of the gulf and freezes sturdy. (Seawater freezes at a lower temperature than freshwater, and it must be colder for longer since bays are normally deeper than lakes.)
Canadian ice fishermen have prolonged plied these waters, and over time, there’s been the occasional report of an angler catching a big Atlantic halibut whereas fishing for cod, skates, and completely different species. Nonetheless since Atlantic halibut are protected — they’re categorised as endangered by the Worldwide Union for the Conservation of Nature — the regulation has traditionally required sport fishermen to launch any halibut they catch. This modified in 2022, when the Canadian authorities decided to make an exception to the regulation throughout the determine of science.
The Atlantic Halibut Winter Fishing Mission for Scientific Features has continued throughout the Saguenay Fjord throughout the two years since. It permits ice fishermen throughout the area to reap an entire of 100 Atlantic halibut over the course of a season. They should first pay money for a selected license from a neighborhood scientific committee, and the minimal dimension for harvest is 85 centimeters, or spherical 33 inches. (Guidelines nonetheless require smaller fish to be launched alive.) These harvested fish are then studied by scientists to permit them to be taught additional in regards to the halibut that inhabit the fjord.
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“Analysis counsel that the populations of some groundfish species throughout the Saguenay Fjord are ‘sink populations,’ which suggests they’re isolated from these of the Estuary and Gulf of St. Lawrence,” scientists with Fisheries and Oceans Canada write. “Inside the case of Atlantic halibut, this topic has been little studied … and the data collected in the middle of the mission will help advance data of the species.”
The 109-pound Atlantic halibut that Rémi and Mathieu Aubin caught on Jan. 21 was the first one harvested as part of the scientific mission this winter. A group of flicks uploaded to Fb current the two anglers stopping, landing, after which weighing the large fish in entrance of a crowded room on the Musée du Fjord.
Neither of them had been able to current contact upon the catch due to a language barrier (every males talk French), nonetheless Mathieu posted photos of the halibut on Fb a day after they caught it.
“What to say after 24 hours…truly I’m nonetheless speechless,” Mathieu writes in a translated mannequin of the Fb put up. “Residing this second with Rémi Aubin touches me enormously. After I used to be youthful, only a few years earlier, he took me with him to utterly completely different our our bodies of water, [including] after all of the majestic fjord. He not solely handed on this passion to me, nonetheless additional importantly, these values!”
Mathieu offers that, in honor of those values, he’ll be donating the meat from the massive halibut to 16 people in need. He clarifies that he obtained’t be accepting any money in return because of, equivalent to throughout the U.S., it’s illegal for sport anglers to advertise their catch in Canada with out a enterprise license.