First, a couple of happy fishermen:
Jimbo's First Halibut
The halibut season in WA is totally wacky. Let’s start right there.
There’s a limit based on weight, but nobody weighs the fish; they just use catch counts and some kind of average. The whole season is 4 days long; two Thursday/Saturday pairs (but not the Fridays, you understand) in mid-May. If the quota is not reached, then they open up a few more days. In this case, we got an extra pair of days, of which I could fish one of them, so I drove out to Clearwater on Wednesday night, got up at 2:30 Thursday morning, and was on the water with Cliff and Prairie Girl by 5am.
The previous halibut day, we’d simply gone the wrong direction. In between, Cliff found the correct spot, and when we arrived around 6:30 or 7am, we found the entire La Push fleet fishing in the same spot. Essentially, you head for just south of a prohibited area, then drift along its southern border. You move up to the west end of the fleet, then fish as you drift eastward, and when you get to the east end of the fleet, you pick up, motor back to the west end, and repeat.
There’s a limit of 1 halibut per fisherman.
I had mine in the boat by 8am.
Cliff brought a nice looking fish to the side of the boat on the next pass, but I lost it for him with a gaffe with the gaff hook. I feel really bad about that, especially because that is one seriously wounded fish, given what happened to it.
We drifted around for another couple of hours with no real action to speak of, then decided to head for Lucky Ling (our secret Lingcod spot) to try our hands at some codding.
OK, this is the other weird rule about halibut fishing. Normally, bottomfishing is only allowed inside of the 20-fathom line. That means that, as you leave shore, as soon as the bottom drops away to 120′, you can’t fish on the bottom further out to sea than that. Even if there’s a seamount under you so the water you’re in is less than 120′.
Except that it’s open past 20 fathoms before June 1.
Or if halibut are open.
srsly?!
So anyway, our secret spot is way out there, even past the halibut grounds. So you can’t fish there, pretty much, unless halibut are open.
Off we went, leaving the rest of the La Push fleet still drifting around for flatties.
On the way out, we saw a whale breaching, and then saw its tail twice as it dove. Spectacular.
When we got to LL, there was another boat within 1/2mi of us, but that was it.
Bottomfishing is a kind of different skill than salmon fishing or tuna fishing. You need a load of line, because the task is essentially to drop all the way to the bottom, and then bounce up and down within 5′ or 10′ of the bottom, while trying not to catch The Earth (the Earth is Not Good Eats). Well, those fish down there are pretty aggressive, because pretty much every time we put the hook down there, something hit it.
I admit that we picked up a red rockfish of some kind (I will never get the name right), a yelloweye (which we turned loose, for all the good that does), and a couple of smaller Lingcod. Other than that, though, we had some serious fights on our hands, because Lingcod are really quite big. And a little feisty. And ugly as sin. But quite tasty!
You’re allowed two Lingcod. It took a bit more than 1 pass over the magic spot before we had our limit, and we literally had to turn one away on the final drop, because we both caught one at the same time.
Cliff let me gaff his final fish, and (with quite a bit of fish positioning on his part), I didn’t miss, this time. It’s good to feel like I got my mojo back.
Another 2 hours back in, and by the time we hit the dock, we’d been out 12 hours. It would be another 4 hours before we were home, with fish and boat cleaned, and ready for bed.
Here’s the catch; the smallest fish is 10#, and the halibut and biggest Lingcod are up around 25#:
