July 28th Halibut Trip- The Hunt For Elusive Creature

Luke and Matt with a pair of lings

Today's trip was a full day halibut Charter, so Miles and I prepared 70lbs of salmon carcasses and chum in hopes of luring in a few big ones.  On our full day halibut trips we generally target larger fish for 3/4 of the day and try to limit the boat out at the end of the day with some average size ones.  We spent the morning fishing offshore rockpiles and soaking salmon heads.  By 3pm we had tried four spots and all we managed to catch were 3 small halibut and a few large ling cod.  I'm not going to sugar coat, It was a tough day for us on the Sea Quest.  The hunt for the elusive 100lb halibut was tougher than anticipated.  Luke and Matt from Anchorage seemed to be catching the majority of the fish on jigs while the salmon head bite was non existant.  Buy 4pm we gave up our hog dreams and went catching instead of fishing.  We pulled up on our spot and in 1.5 hours we had limited the boat out with 15-25lb halibut.  The groups moral changed instantly because by that time we were just happy to catch fish.  You have to appreciate the slower fishing days too as they are the main reason we can really appreciate the awesome ones.