Saltwater Fishing part 6

No birds no problem! If you can't find any birds you can still find bonito, there are a few simple steps to finding fish most days, even if you do not see any birdpiles. First find out where the bones were the last few days, check the fish counts of your local partyboats, check with friends to see where they have been catching bones, or go to areas where you have caught them in the past.

If bonito have been caught recently in an area, I may start out trolling a small tuna feather about 4 inches long, I usually troll about 6 to 8 mph when I'm searching for fish, and run my lures 30 to 40 feet behind the boat. Trolling in a slow "S" pattern is better than trolling in a straight line. I always have someone on the binos looking out at distance.

If I see a kelp paddy, I troll by it from several directions, if there are lots of paddys I usually only make one pass. If there are only a few I make three or four passes and throw some live chum on them as I go past. Keep an eye out for boils on the chum as that may indicate bones are present.

I keep the fly rods sitting in the corner of the rail so they will be handy when we get a trolling hookup. When a fish hits the feather, immediately throw a handful of chum and cast your fly out behind the boat and strip it in fast. If fish start boiling in the chum, keep throwing chum a few at a time to keep them around the boat.

If no fish are located trolling, I usually look for a partyboat and anchor about 200 feet behind him ( don't get too close, always give anchored fishing boats space to fish in ) Party boats usually throw lots of chum and it will come down current towards you, this can get bones in a chewing mood if they are in the area. If no bonito are to be found, all is not lost, there are plenty of other fish species that will hit the flys, calico and sand bass, mackerel, halibut ( sinking line in shallow water ) yellowtail, white sea bass, and many others. I have caught all these and more on the fly here in Southern California.

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Fish Report for Friday June 17, 2007

Today I had a charter with 4 persons aboard, plus myself. We fished the rockfish early in the morning and by 11 am we had many nice reds ( 3 to6lbs. ) and an assortment of other colorful, and tasty rockfish. In the early afternoon we fished for calico bass and did real well, with 5 fish over 4lbs. ( released ) and 21 keepers plus dozens of shorts, less than 13 inches, but still fun to catch. We also had sand bass, rock bass, mackerel, a shorthalibut and some blacksmith perch. All in all a very successful day, the guys were kept busy catching fish and enjoying a beautiful day on Santa Monica Bay.
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Fish Report for June 12 - Sunday

I had a charter in Santa Monica Bay, with four anglers catch 26 calico bass, 7 sand bass, 1 5lb trigger fish, 2 sheep head, 1 cabazon and 1 halibut. These were keepers, we also caught about twice that number of shorts, not keepers but still fun to catch. 99% of the time we use circle hooks, they mostly hook the fish in the corner of their mouth, making unhooking and release a snap.
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Big Baits part 10

I was pulling as hard as the light line would allow, and slowly but surely the fish started coming up closer to the surface, one more feeble run and the fish gave up, now I was gaining line steadily. I looked into the depths as I wound the fish to the surface, now I could see it, WOW, it was a giant halibut! It was the largest halibut I had ever seen, outside of Alaska. One swing of the gaff and it was on the boat, her tail beating loudly on the deck, I could not believe what I was seeing, here was the biggest California halibut I had ever caught, or had been caught on my boat.

As she was flopping on the deck, she spit out 5 mackerel, up to 2 1/2 lbs. probably eight pounds worth. Later on the scales she hit 49 1/2 pounds, add the 8 pounds of macks she spit up, and she would have easily broke the California state record and the IGFA all tackle record for Calif. halibut.

But after I received my certificate for my 21st IGFA world record, I promised my self I would let all record fish go until I had helped others catch 21 World records. My clients are now at 20 world records, and I have only 1 more to go to fulfill my promise, in the meantime I have released over 70 record class fish that I have caught. I am a professional fisherman and I should be able to break records, but helping others catch a record fish is a very special feeling, 100

times more special than catching my own!!!!

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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!
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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.

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Life Lesson 4: Laughter shall fuel your spirit's engine

When things get slow during the day as they usually do at some point, I find myself looking for someone to pick on. When my friend Terry G. is on the boat, he is usually my victim.

One day I had a near shore trip and Terry was helping me out, as my deckhand was sick. He was up in the front of the boat helping someone with a large backlash ( when you cast too hard and the spool is revolving faster than the line, and you get an awful tangle of line on your reel ). His rod was in a rod holder, dragging a sardine across the bottom, hoping a big halibut would eat it. (HEH, HEH, HEH, the perfect scenario for a "GOTCHA")

Running inside the cabin I notice a 5 pound Rock cod sinker, ( this is a 5 lb. lead weight used in fishing 500 to 900 feet deep.) Yes, that's the same as three football fields, stacked end to end. Attaching it to his line with a snap swivel, and letting it slide down his line to the bottom, I quickly loosened his drag a little and yelled, "Terry you have a big fish on!!" He ran back and picked up the now bent double rod. You've got light line, play him carefully! Terry would reel the weight up about 20 feet when the loose drag would start to slip and the sinker would pull 15 or 20 ft of line off the reel ( this is how some halibut feel, just a very heavy weight on the end of the line, sometimes making short runs and pulling line off the reel ).

No one else had seen me do this dastardly deed and everyone else thought he had a reel fish. After about 20 minutes Terry's face was beginning to show signs of strain, so I said, " He's getting tired, tighten up your drag," several times during the "fight" heh, heh, heh, he looked at me and whispered, "W R?" Meaning "world record".

I had already helped Terry catch two world record Bonita, on a fly rod, and his wife, Diane, catch a thirty seven lb. halibut, also a women's world record. I could see it was getting closer to the surface, so I yelled to everyone, "GET BACK!"

It was huge, so I swung the net down and hollered, "It must be a world record, "SINKER"!"- as it hit the deck with a loud THUNK! For a moment everyone just stood there stunned, then every one burst into laughter, EXCEPT TERRY! But he was a good sport and after a couple of months he actually started talking to me again. ( Just kidding, this was just one of the many jokes we were always playing on each other )

Life lesson # 4 Laughter shall fuel your spirit's engine

A thirty seven pound halibut, also a world record!
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