Big Baits part 8

I lived in Alaska from 1969 to 1975 and did quite a bit of halibut fishing, first on charter boats out of Homer, but that was rather expensive, so we bought a 16 foot aluminum boat, that we launched from the beach at Deep Creek.

On the charter boats they used herring for bait, putting several on

a large hook, and dropping it to the bottom. We caught lots of " chicken halibut, " fish from 20 to 30 lbs. and a few larger ones, but none of the giants the area is famous for.

The party boats were pretty expensive, so we bought a 16 foot aluminum boat with a 10hp motor, and launched it from the beach at Deep Creek and several other places where creeks ran into the sea.

We soon learned that the small herring mostly caught smaller halibut, fish fishermen in Southern Calif. would do anything for. ( 20 -30 lbs. )

First we tried a fillet from a pink salmon and the halibut we caught started getting bigger, so we tried the whole fish and started catching some really big fish, plus we didn't have to waste our time with all the little trash fish that always seemed to be stealing our herring. We learned that the big girls were found at the first drop off out from the river mouths. We figured they laid out there on the bottom eating dead salmon that had washed down from the spawning rivers, and that is why they got so big, they just lie there and the current brings them food in large amounts, and since dead salmon don't run very fast, they were very easy to catch!

The fishing seemed to be best at low tide, probably since the tide goes down 30 feet and the water goes out 1/2 mile off shore, so the current takes the dead salmon much farther out at low tide. We even went so far as to collect spawned out, dead salmon from creek banks and the halibut just gobbled them up, but they sure smelled BAD!! We finally settled on salmon skins from salmon we caught and skinned, looked big, tasted right, but was a lot easier to carry and fish with, without the awful smell!! The skins were also easier to reel up than a 10 pound dead fish.

Tomorrow big baits for Calif Halibut.