Wintertime Iron fishing....

[-scallywag-]

We got a gentleman’s start saterday and launched around 7am to light offshores and ankle slappers. There was tons of sardines and bait sized macks around feeding on the surface but, with no signs of predators, and the chance that there was still squid on the 3/4’s, I didn’t waste much time with the finbait.

Once out past the condo I could see the tell tale signs of the gulls lazily lingering above the area that was holding squid last week. After a couple drops with the 6x I finally snagged one, and sent it back down on the dropperloop while I filled the tank using the iron.

About three hours and a few hundred drops later, I felt a violent thud follow by a few solid shakes, then nothing but dead weight. About thirty seconds later I was eye to eye with a 40” halibut wondering how I was gonna retrieve my iron from those snapping jaws. I definitely had second thoughts about sticking the gaff in this green fish, cause with halibut the fight doesn’t start until they are to the boat. Lucky after watching a few videos by MrGregAndrews, I was able to keep the head under water, get the belly gaff and slip the game clip through without entering into hand to hand combat with this dinosaur. Trying to get good pics of a still fresh fish is by far the sketchyest part. 40” 31lbs.





While some may doubt the legitimacy of the California Halibut’s high point value in the west coast whopper’s, I feel its more than fair. These fish are just as stubborn and hard to catch as the YT and WSB, but lack the WFO bites that make the YT and WSB such an easy target for a few weeks a year. While it may not not take heavy gear/tackle to fight these monsters to the surface, once yakside the fight truly begins and doesn’t really end until you have that fish on dry land. They simply refuse to die!!

Hopefully the WCW will resume again this year in a very similar format, if anything changes I would like to see points awarded for the TOP TWO fish in slam for that month....and maybe bump up the minimum submittable weight (after all this is The West Coast Whoppers!!!!). Its wintertime, have faith in the iron!!!