This is an excerpt from John and Lyza's book, The Inheritance.

Ginette, Boaz and I decided to go fishing. Outside the safety of our sanctuary, the north wind blew strongly, discouraging us from venturing too far, but we decided we could at least fish around the little islands close at hand. Soon we were bumping along in the chop and spray, a little nervous to go so far out, but anxious to find some good fishing. Suddenly, after a mile, we came upon kelp right under us, and I cut the motor quickly looking about sheepishly for the reef that kelp always signals. Twenty feet away I could see the pale outline of a rock only a foot under water. My initial scare gave way to the realization that this place had all the makings of a great fishing spot. Sure enough, Ginette got a fish on her pole immediately and I caught bottom. I left my stuck line and turned to pull her cod into the boat while thrusting the overly enthusiastic dog aside. Boaz thought it his duty to greet every incoming fish by hanging over the gunwales on his elbows with his jowls a few inches from the water, his rump riding high and tail working vigorously. When the fish reached the surface he would try to mouth it in the water and escort it through the air into the bottom of the boat where he would proceed to lick it unmercifully, all of which were good reasons to leave him behind on fishing trips but if I did I just couldn't bear his reproachful look on our return.

While trying to restrain the dog and attend to Ginette's fish, my line suddenly gave two authoritative yanks and began moving off in a northerly direction. Bottom was alive! “I've got a fish. I've got a fish!” My two companions looked up from the rock cod flapping in the bilge. “It's really big!” I managed to splutter as fisherman's fever began to possess me. I knew whatever was on the end of my line had to be the largest fish I had ever encountered. It acted different-- not the frantic flight for bottom of a rock cod, nor the stubborn yank of a ling cod that ran for bottom when it neared the surface, nor the dongy dong circling drag of a dogfish. It was a powerful gliding weight that peeled off my line like a running salmon, but deep, determined, and steady. At that moment I doubted if my curiosity to know what it was would be satisfied because the tackle and rod were light but I kept hanging on for twenty minutes. Finally a shape began to emerge. If one has never brought in a big fish in cold clear green water, it's hard to convey the awesome spooky feeling when you catch a first glimpse of it coming up from the mysterious netherworld below. First there is only a dark shadow of movement, and then a dim outline begins to materialize with some distinctive marking that spurs a sudden shout of recognition. The fish always comes up headfirst, to meet you face to face with its googly eyes. As this one slowly levitated toward the surface he had a brownish leather jacket appearance and rippling along the edges of his kite-like shape was a luminous white underbelly. As it rose to meet me, the characteristic white bulbous lips and the broad flounderlike back elicited a shock of recognition.

“It's a halibut!” I shouted. “My first halibut!” Ginette came bouncing to the back of the boat to see.

“Daddy, you caught a halibut! Yay, I'm so excited.” Halibut and chips was the biggest thing on her mind and the fact we had even asked God to help us catch a halibut for dinner. Then she saw the look of astonishment on my face and hesitated while I manifested my demented crazy man laugh and fumbled for a gaff. “It's huge! Look at it!”

In the frenzy of fisherman's lust and without thinking it through, I bent down and slipped the lightweight gaff under the monster's belly while greeting him nose to nose at the water's surface. I yanked upward with a mighty heave, and slid him heavily over the ten foot boat's pontoon. He left only about 3 feet for the rest of us. I looked up with triumph to see Ginette and the dog crammed together in the bow with their butts hanging in mid-air, ready to back into the bay if necessary. Ginette's eyes were big as saucers and Bo would have nothing to do with landing this fish, contributing only a nervous little “Wuff” to the effort. The fish sat stunned for a moment with its nose on the gas tank and its tail curled up over the motor while it worked its cavernous gills open and shut, spooking the forward mates even more. I sat panting for a moment as the realization dawned on me that what I had just done was not smart. I had just hauled a sixty pound mass of pure muscle into a bathtub-size boat with three people. The fish arched in a momentary curl and then erupted into a series of great ka-thumps thrashing wildly as though he would shake the boat apart. I began flailing away at his head with a very inadequate wooden fish bonker while Bo snorted and backed up until his tail was in the water. Ginette shrieked, “I'm scared, Daddy. I want to go back to Mommy! Let's go home!”

I broke the stick whaling on him then broke the aluminum gaff, but he finally settled down to quivering shivers. I must have gaffed him in some vitals or the battle would have lasted longer. Now I understand why some fishermen shoot halibut in the head before bringing them aboard. We slowly motored the distance back to 'Mommy' with our new passenger making only occasional thrashings. Later we discovered he had punctured a hole in our boat with his sharp teeth.

Well, now Ginette had her own fish story and could hold her own around any campfire with her other siblings. The halibut's last fit occurred as we pulled alongside Fred, sending Mom to the other side of the deck with her mouth agape, thankful she hadn't gone with us. One time on our honeymoon I had traumatized her by throwing a speared, but still alive large ling cod in the dinghy with her when I was scuba diving. I then promptly descended back into the deep without a lot of consultation about the matter, and I had never heard the end of it for my brutish behavior and need for sensitivity training. We dragged this brute ashore, dispatched it, cleaned it, and took lots of video footage. We could have eaten halibut for a year if we'd had a freezer handy, but we were 500 miles from home and as abundant as the provision around us was, we could only eat our little share and leave the rest for the multitude of scavengers above and below the water. I felt guilty about the waste, but I guess it wasn't wasted from their point of view. We were not in a land of people centeredness.