The tuna have decided to stay a long ways away from Oregon thi summer, so the next best thing is halibut fishing. I have been feeling somewhat snakebit for halibut this summer, having taken three trips without even a bite. Halibut is managed with a quota, and the quota is disappearing, and it was starting to look like an empty freezer this winter. Persistence payed off, and that turned around this weekend.
Friday a friend, Neal, and I tried some new numbers given to me by another friend. We settled into a drift in a thick fog, and had not even a sniff in the first 45 minutes. The ocean was running 4 ft swell at eight seconds, with a wind chop on top, making it uncomfortable fishing at best. I had the feeling the wind was picking up, and it had the potential to turn ugly quickly. We pulled our lines from the first drift, and I was reluctantly going to head another six miles out to a different spot, ending up 20 miles out. As we moved maybe a quarter mile in the fog, I began to see other boats in the area, and decided to give this area one more drift.
We dropped lines back in, and within 15 minutes Neal's line takes off. Neal is an accomplished steelhead fisherman, but this was his first halibut experience, and he's not sure what to do. He grabs the rod and tightens the drag, and declares the fish is gone, just the weight is left. I doubt it I tell him, just keep cranking. About then he feels a head shake, and now he's excited. I look at the other rod, and it looks like his fish has tangled it, but it shows no sign of a fish. I grab it to untangle it, and the reel starts to scream; I glance at Neal's reel, and it's not taking any line, which means DOUBLE!
Neal's fish reaches the surface first, and it's a monster, and heads back to the bottom. I haven't seen my fish yet, but decide to hang it in a rod holder and hope it sticks while we get Neal's in. The fish surfaces again, and I get a harpoon in it, and then a gaff and drag it aboard - a monster! We scramble to get the harpoon out of his fish, and return to mine, and manage to get it on board, and it's a very respectable fish.
Neal's fish was 56 inches long, and we didn't weigh it, but the charts estimate it at 87 pounds. I told the fish cleaner that, and he shakes his head and says nope, that's a fat fish and I guarantee it's heavier than that, man I wish we would have weighed it. Mine was 40 inches, which is about 30 pounds.
Move forward a day, and my son in law, Eric, and I return to the same numbers. We drop in, and within fifteen minutes im into a fish which turns out to be 35 inches, about as small as I'll keep, but big enough it's really hard to turn loose. We talk a bit, and considering we started the weekend with an empty freezer, decide to keep it. It no longer hits the deck, and Eric's rod goes off, and he brings in a nice 40 inch fish. The Oregon limit is one per day, so we are done, but I have to pull the bait away from another fish already biting. We got to the boat at 5:30, ran 14 miles, and were tagged out by 7:30, quite a day.
I texted the friend who gave me the numbers, and they were just getting ready to head out. Based on our results, they were more selective, having 12 takedowns in two hours, releasing several fish, and keeping three fish over 40 inches and a 52. He said it was the hottest halibut bite he's ever seen.
Another fantastic day on the Tolman! Thank you Renn!
