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Fishing Report September 2010
LAST MINUTE HALIBUT
By
Hank Pennington
Is your freezer bulging with halibut? Mine sure is.
But am I through halibut fishing?
Not on your life!
For one thing, we have lots of visitors this time of year. And they hope to go home with halibut as well as silver salmon.
I’m certainly not going to give away our hoard. Not only that, our friends and family would prefer to catch their own.
As a matter of fact, halibut fishing is just too much fun to stop yet, even if the freezer is in fine shape. We do a lot of halibut fishing in September, even if we release most that we catch.
I’ve got to admit that part of the attraction of September halibut fishing is the changes that occur. After a summer of easy fishing, it suddenly turns challenging again.
The fish are moving in pursuit of moving prey, and they’re in a rush to put on one last big feed before they descend into deeper colder water.
You can visit a lot of your summer hotspots and go fishless in September, then make a small change and get slammed.
Last week is a perfect example. We had been catching fish steadily in very shallow water, including a 75 pounder in 22 feet, a 60 pounder in 8 feet, and a 73 pounder in 14 feet of water. We even watched those last two approach and hit the jigs right below the boat!
Two days later we went back and couldn’t find a single halibut in any of our shallow hot spots. And the next day was a fishless repeat!
Our visiting son-in-law had enough of that kind of “action” and went exploring. And did he ever find the halibut!
In 80 feet of water!
Go figure! I can’t imagine why the halibut would make such a sudden and dramatic jump from shallow to deep, but I can’t argue with the results.
But the funny thing about September halibut fishing is that they could be right back up in the shallows again tomorrow! There’s plenty of bait up in the shallows and the water is warm.
If you enjoy hunting as much as fishing, then September halibut fishing might be just the “crossover” sport for you. But I’d start now, because as the end of the month nears there will be a whole lot more hunting for the halibut hot spots.
In the spirit of “hunting” we generally do more jig fishing than bait fishing, but that’s only part of the picture. In fact, that’s one of the big variables.
From one day to the next, and even from one location to the next, you can never be certain whether the halibut will want a simple cut bait laying on bottom or a moving jig.
Our solution is to try both at once. Someone on the boat will put down a cut bait, while everyone else tries jigs. Whichever produces first pretty well determines what everyone else will be using in a matter of moments.
When hunting for halibut we almost never anchor the boat in September, so a “still” bait is a bit misleading. We drop the weight to the bottom, then reel it up a few inches and allow the following bait to skim and skip along the bottom as the boat drifts.
Choice of baits gets interesting about now. While it seems intuitive that halibut might prefer a piece of herring or salmon this time or year, that’s not always the case. In fact, they might even be getting a little tired of the same old foods.
I say that because other baits often work better. In the last week we’ve had much better catches on strips of bait cut from cod, rockfish or greenling, and yesterday the top producer was small whole codfish.
We caught halibut on lots of things, but the biggest fish all grabbed 12” to 15” live cod skimmed just over bottom. And they did it with a vengeance! For whatever reason, all strikes were violent and the runs were especially long an powerful.
Jig fishing reflects the change in bait preferences, too.
While fishing earlier in August was as effective with bare jigs as with baited jigs, recent fishing has been best with baited jigs.
But gone are the days of simply lacing a small sliver of herring onto the jig hook.
The halibut greatly prefer cod, rockfish or greenling, but tiny bits of it simply to add smell. If your piece of bait is too large, results will suffer.
Even the choice of jigs has changed, further reflecting my impression that the halibut are simply sick and tired of the same old foods. While needlefish still abound in the area, dart-style jigs are not producing well.
We’re having better luck on leadhead jigs with rubber tails, especially tails in orange, root beer or “motor oil” colors. But that’s not the whole story of jigs!
Even if you have to use large jig heads due to water depths or currents, the halibut prefer smaller tails right now. It may look funny to string a 4” onto a 16 ounce jig head, but the fish get the final vote.
As a matter of fact, when putting a small tail on a big jig head, I have better luck if I use a larger tail, but shorten it to the right length by cutting excess off the front of the tail. That results in a heavier tail that is easier to thread on the large hooks, plus resists the tug of halibut a little better.
Since FUN is the name of the game in halibut fishing when your freezer is mostly full, September is a great time to experiment with light tackle halibut fishing.
We resort to heavier rods for the heavier jigs if we find the fish in deep water, but we vastly prefer to use light rods and hunt for halibut that will take the lighter jigs.
How light are the rods we’re using right now?
My “heavy” rod has 20 pound line on it, and the rest have either 12- or 16-pound test line. They’re basically the same rods that you see people on rivers using for silver salmon.
The only distinction is that the rods work better for jigging if they have a little stiffer tips than is typical for salmon. It’s just a lot easier to move the jig and set the hook with a stiffer rod, no matter how light the line.
If you hook up with a really large halibt on one of these light outfits, you’re really in for a battle. And that’s the name of the game! Have some fun with those fish. You are going to turn them loose anyway!
The real truth is that the smaller halibut more typical in most catches are just a lot more fun with the light tackle.
A 20- or 30-pound halibut on the same rod you use for silver salmon will fight as hard or harder as a salmon the same weight. And when you find the fish, you generally find lots, so the action is typically a lot faster than you ever experience while salmon fishing.
Have I left something out?
You bet I have!
How do you release a halibut? Especially a big one?
It’s actually quite easy with jigs. Just bring the halibut alongside, then slide your gaff into the bend of the jig hook. One quick jerk, and the hooks pops free, especially if you have pinched the barb on the hook beforehand.
Sound like fun?
If you love halibut fishing as much as I do, it’s even more fun than summer fishing.
Best of all, you can completely avoid the crowds on popular salmon rivers while having even hotter action!
Hank Pennington is on our panel of expert outdoor advisors.
For more info on this or any other subject contact the store directly.
Thanks
Jesse Glamann
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