Big Baits part 9 (1)

After coming back to California in 1975, I started fishing for halibut down here where a 15 pounder was considered large and 20 pounds and up was a trophy. The standard fare was anchovies, and if you could get them sardines. I caught a lot of keepers ( 22 inches and up in Calif, ) but only a few were large enough to be considered trophies.

Then I started thinking about Alaskan halibut. I started experimenting with larger baits, and quickly started catching more of the big girls. In most fish species the female is much larger, probably because eggs are much larger than a sperm, and even a small male could fertilize the largest females eggs. I found that the larger sized smelt, herring, lizard fish, tomcod, and medium perch and small to medium mackerel worked well for the bigger halibut.

Then one day I was catching mackerel for shark bait, I was using a medium iron lure as the "frogs" just ate it up. It came with a treble hook which made unhooking the "frogs" a chore, so I cut off two of the hooks and pinched down the barb on the last hook, this made unhooking the bait very easy, as all I had to do was grab the lure, turn it upside down and the macks just slid off into the bait tank or cooler. After making about 30 pieces of bait the macks disappeared, so thinking they may have gone deeper I dropped the iron down to about 50 feet, and started jigging the iron up and down.

On the third jig the lure stopped, I raised the rod to set the hook, but was surprised to find the iron stuck on the bottom. How could this be, I said to myself? I was fishing in 200 feet of water! Suddenly the bottom started swimming away!