Last winter, a friend and I started riffing on the idea of getting halibut to eat a fly. We knew it had been done before (not necessarily a frequent thing here in AK, but we DO have some crazies around), but a lot of the "fly-caught" halibut we've seen were either caught fishing jigs on mono "with a fly rod" or some such qualifier...we wanted to see if a fella could cast an actual fly on an actual flyline and catch halibut.
In late May of this year, we put our plan in action with some success - we DID get halibut to eat out flies (see also:
this post), but to paraphrase ol' Ben Kenobi, "these aren't the fish we are looking for"...
Yesterday we tried a different location, one with more tidal current and a sandy/shell bottom. With the wind moving the same way as the tide, there was no way we were gonna be able to drift it, so we set the hook and got busy casting. The first fish of the day was a big-ass Buffalo sculpin. The second fish was a 20" halibut. The third fish ate mid-strip, and by the big head-shakes it was immediately apparent this was the size class of fish we had been looking for. As if that wasn't crystal clear, the fish then decided it didn't like the situation and made a long-ass run for deeper water. After about 5-6 minutes of give and take, I convinced it to stick around for dinner. At 36", about 20lb, and bending my 12wt EPR to the cork, this was the fish we were after.
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Several high-fives and a few little halibut later, something inhaled my fly as it was sinking into the zone. I thought I may have hooked the bottom at first, but then the "bottom" decided it didn't like the yanky lip-stingin' situation it was in and took off for the depths. After about 10 minutes of mostly give and a little take, I managed to peel it off the bottom and got busy winchin'. When all the spray and shouting settled down, we took a pic of my next months' fish n chip supply...
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46", about 45 lbs, and the new benchmark of this particular fly journey. I got a feeling this might be my new rabbithole, and I'm pretty OK with that.
Peace, y'all
At least that gives me an excuse to order more tungsten powder and a spool of hollow braid.
