HALIBUT WOW THESE AREA ANGLERS WORLD RECORDS ARE PENDING FOR CATCHES.

Byline: Brett Pauly Outdoors Editor

Talk about fattie flatties. Two regional California halibut catches in the past week-and-a-half are pending world records.

Will Akins of Grover Beach became understandably green - with envy, that is - when a 32-pound flatfish hit the deck June 6 aboard the Seahawk LXV out of Santa Barbara during a limited-load trip to Santa Rosa Island. The steaks, err, stakes would soon get heavier.

``Then a 47-pounder came aboard, and I got jealous,'' said Akins, 26. Tired of rockfishing, he was taking a day off from skippering the Harbor Pathfinder, another party boat, out of Morro Bay. ``I wanted one of those halibut.''

Another angler had been broken off by some behemoth on 15-pound line. It figured to have been a bat ray. When Akins soon got hooked up on another huge specimen on live squid and 30-pound line, he was hoping against hope it wasn't another ray. He had already hooked a bat ray himself earlier in the day. The mystery was solved 20 minutes later when the fish came to gaff.

``I didn't know what I had until it came up,'' Akins said. ``When it hit the deck, it was like, `Wow.' I've caught Alaska (Pacific) halibut that big, but it's rare to see a California halibut that big, obviously.''

Obviously, because nothing as big as the 57.6-pound Paralichthys californicus has been recorded by the International Game Fish Association, the Dania Beach, Fla., group that oversees such important sport-fishing standards.

If approved, Akins' catch will be an all-tackle record, more than doubling his own previous heaviest California halibut. It would eclipse the standing record of 53-1/4 pounds, set nearly 11 years ago by Russ Harmon, proprietor of Cisco's Sportfishing in Oxnard. Harmon is angling in Alaska - presumably for bigger halibut to fry - and unavailable to comment on the expected fall of his impressive mark.

``Yeah, I was surprised,'' the understated Akins said after the remarkable journey produced several more flatties in the 15- to 25-pound range and a half-dozen white seabass to 45 pounds. ``You don't think you're going to go out and catch anything like that.''

Meanwhile, John Whalen wasn't expecting to catch a world-record fish, either, when he took out his freshwater crappie rod and a reel loaded with 4-pound line. Under-sized halibut, tomcod, mackerel and calico bass were more the speed Whalen anticipated June 9 when he went out with a friend, Stephen Sotelo, in Dana Point Harbor on a paddle boat.

Even when he ``got ripped'' by a fish, he thought he had hooked into a shark and fought it leisurely . . . until he got it to the paddle boat.

``We looked down and my friend and I said, `Oh my God,' '' recalled Whalen, of Capistrano Beach.

The little trout net they had wasn't going to cut it on this huge halibut. They needed a gaff. Just then a boat passed by and the anglers asked to borrow a gaff. Luckily the passers-by had one.

When Sotelo attempted gaffing the fish, he missed and the fish promptly took a 100-yard run. Whalen thought it was over. But he managed to get the flattie to the boat again.

Sotelo smartly gave the gaff to Whalen, who, with the rod in one hand and the gaff in the other, stuck the fish, ending the 30-minute battle.

The 45-inch fish took up 60 percent of the paddle boat. Curious, Whalen called his wife and asked her to look up the IGFA line-class record for 4-pound test, which is 20 pounds, 14 ounces, hooked in April 1991 by Scott Houghton at Santa Catalina Island.

Thinking he had a shot, Whalen took the fish to the harbor weighmaster. The scale read 28.6 pounds - a record, if approved.

``I've never caught a halibut over 20 pounds, so it was like, `Wow,' '' said Whalen, who also holds the 16-pound line-class record for black skipjack - an 18-pound, 6-ounce specimen caught in 1989 at Mexico's Isla Cerralvo. ``I've caught a couple legal halibut (more than 22 inches), in the harbor in the past two years, but they're few and far between.

``It was just being in the right place at the right time doing the right thing.''

Dave Strege of the Orange County Register contributed to this article.

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Photo

PHOTO (Color) Will Akins, left, gets an assist from Seahawk LXV skipper Merit McCrea in hoisting his pending all-tackle world-record California halibut.

Steve Tonnesen/Special to the Daily News