Halibut Fishing is one of my favorite activites. Growing up in Florida we used to head out deep sea fishing for Grouper. Targeting Halibut is done in much the same way. The Captain parks the boat over some structure and you drop your lines straight down to the bottom.
The waves that day were about 5′-6′ once we got out of the harbor. It was hard to keep the boat anchored over any type of bottom, but our captain gave it his best. Finally a short time after my bait had gone down, while were were anchored in a small cove in about 100′ of water near mud bay, I felt that classic twitch at the end of the line. I waited just a second and slowly reeled until I could feel something on the end of the line and then i set the hook hard.
Whereas before I just had a big chunck of dead pink salmon on my hook, now I had a beastly Halibut, that I would later find was just over 100 lbs, on the end of the line. It pulled hard against me, but I let the rod do alot of the work, as I slowly hoisted my catch from the deep blue water.
Finally we got the fish to the surface and quickly put a harpoon in its side. Then we took out the rifle. See you dont just fish for big halibut, you hunt them too. After dispatching the halibut, we cut a gill to bleed him and pulled him up on the boat.
Another great day on the Lynn Canal, Another great fish in the boat.
I love Halibut Fishing. Visit this Halibut Fishing site to learn more for yourself.
