Halibut caught in shallow water are very active, usually starting off at great speed when they are hauled up from the bottom, often spinning the dory around in their attempts to escape. (Goode and Collins, 1887) The offshore fishery for halibut began about 1830, when cod fishermen brought word to Gloucester of a great abundance of them on Georges Bank,[61] and they were caught there for a few years thereafter in numbers that seem almost unbelievable today. Thus we read of 250 caught in three hours; of vessels loaded in a couple of days; and of a single smack landing 20,000 pounds in a day.
From Fishes of the Gulf of Maine by Bigelow and Schoeder, 1953
GLOUCESTER — On March 7, 1935, two men trawling for halibut from a Gloucester schooner off Newfoundland disappeared from their overturned dory and were presumed drowned. The deaths of Charles Daley and Stephen Olsson were unremarkable, except that they were among the last of their kind. Their families mourned and then turned to the task of surviving without them. Within a few years, dory fishing was no longer. (From a review of Alone at Sea by John N Morris, 2010)
Good Morning Gloucester 