Fairbanks woman reels in 199.5-pound halibut not once, but twice
by Tim Mowry / tmowry@newsminer.com
Fairbanks Daily Newsminer

FAIRBANKS — This is a story about the big one that didn’t get away. Actually, it did get away for a little while, but it came back.Melody Dalbec, of Fairbanks, caught a 199.5-pound halibut in Valdez on Saturday not once, but twice. After it escaped the first time, she brought it to the side of the charter boat she was fishing on, the Dan Orion.
“Once we got a good look at him, the captain got a little excited,” Dalbec said of captain Dave Wiley. “He harpooned him, and the next thing
I know, the line broke, the harpoon came out and the fish was gone with my lure and my line.”
This was how Wiley described it: “It thrashed around so hard the dart ripped back out of the halibut and it ran back under the bottom of the boat and the line broke.”
Disappointed but not deterred, an exhausted Dalbec — it had taken her about 30 minutes to get the fish to the surface — grabbed another rod and continued fishing.
It wasn’t long before she and two other fishermen got their lines tangled and captain Dave Wiley told the three anglers, one of which was Dalbec’s husband, Randy, to reel their lines in so he could untangle the mess.
“It was obvious when we were reeling in that we had something,” Dalbec said. “I could feel my husband reeling, but there was no pressure on my line.”
When Dalbec and the other two fishermen finally got their cluster of lines and sinkers reeled in to the point where Wiley could untangle them, the captain noticed a fourth line.
“I started pulling the mess over the side, and there was another line in the snarl going over the side,” Wiley said. “I looked down and there’s that great big fish a few feet past the snarl.”
That much was obvious because the fish had guts falling out of the hole where Wiley had harpooned it the first time, as well as the lure still in its mouth.
“Sure as tootin’, it was my fish,” Dalbec said. “I looked at (Wiley) and he said, ‘Wow, I’ve never experienced anything like this before.’”
The fish was the biggest halibut caught during the 11-day Halibut Hullabaloo Tournament, earning Dalbec two tickets anywhere Alaska Airlines flies. The fish also was big enough to take the lead in the Valdez Halibut Derby, which would be worth $15,000 if her catch holds up until the end of the derby on Sept. 5.
Chances are slim that will happen, considering the smallest fish to win the derby since it started in 20 years ago is a 210-pounder back in 1992 and six of the past seven winners have been more than 300 pounds. But that doesn’t bother Dalbec.“I’m just tickled,” Dalbec said. “It’s a story I’ll tell my grandkids forever.”
The fish came up a half-pound shy of the 200-pound mark when it was weighed, and Dalbec said it probably would have been more than 200 pounds had they been able to get it on the boat the first time she caught it. “It had to be down there an hour bleeding out with entrails dragging behind it,” she said.
It was only Dalbec’s second time halibut fishing. The charter was a gift from friend and fellow dart team member Alison Koss, who won a raffle for a two-person charter last winter.
“It was either a bear gun or a halibut charter,” Dalbec said of Koss’ prize. “She won the raffle and took me as a friend.”Dalbec’s husband, Randy, and friend Case Sanders, another dart team member, joined them.“We got the trip on luck, and we got the fish on luck,” said Dalbec, a 41-year-old special education secretary at North Pole Elementary School. “It was a wonderful trip.”
In addition to catching her big halibut twice, Dalbec also reeled in a two-for-one special when she caught a rock fish that was in the mouth of a ling cod. While she could have kept the rock fish, the ling cod wouldn’t let go of the smaller fish so she tossed them both back.“He wanted it more than me,” Dalbec said of the ling cod.

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