How to land a halibut

[rossman]

Really great post. I have personalky experienced the results of not doing it correctly on a couple ocaisions.

One July early morning a couple years ago, I was out with my son out of DP. I was lucky enough to hook and land a 45 lb WSB (the one in my avatar actually). My son helped me clip it and stow it behind my seat. An hour or so later I hooked a Halibut of around 18 lbs. Was able get him gaffed but in the mouth. I beat him a couple time about the head and sholders, and thought he as ok to bring on board. Took him on board and put him under my legs cuz my clip was already being used on the WSB. My son was now 1/4 mile from me working another area. I started paddling to him to let him know that with 45 lbs of WSB and 18lbs of halibut; I was heading in. I got to within 5o yards of him and the halibut went nutzo. Slapping at my legs and chewing at my groin. Finally made one flip and he was over the side along with my gaff. A minute later my gaff pops up to the surface. The bastard was playng possum for over 30 minutes.

Another time in the same area, I landed another halibut in the 18 to 20 lb range. Gaffed him in the right spot, but probably brought him on board a little early. Had him clipped but when I brought him onto my lap he went balistic. With one flick of his broom tail, he launched my Calstar Jig Stick, and Trini 20 out of my front rod holder, and some 20 feet from my yak. That was a $700 halibut.

The point here is that there seems to be way too many steps in landing a halibut on a yak, but taking shortcuts, or just not heeding these instructions can result in a lot of interesting things happening, and most of them are bad.

[bellcon]

Not gonna tell the whole story
but I will say I fugged up on my PB halibut to date...
and this was the result:



That's from my gaff
one minute it was deep in her
the next it was deep in me...
and she was gone



great thread by the way

[yakrider]

Originally Posted by bellcon

Not gonna tell the whole story
and this was the result:



That's from my gaff
one minute it was deep in her
the next it was deep in me...
and she was gone



great thread by the way

I think you should start a new thread about how to gaff an arm!!!!
and...WTF do mean you are not going to tell the story...
how can you post that and NOT tell the story...
come on!!!!!

[ship 4 brains]

This may be a stupid question, but how and where do you clip the gills to bleed them out?

[Gino]

reach behind there gill plate, and grab one of the red frilly things, grab and pull hard. they will blee dout all over, but thier blood congeals so not to bad to deal with.

[Whizz Bang]

Okay, I love threads like this. When I first got started with this little addiction of ours, I stumbled across a BIG fish and unknowingly pissed off more than a few guys with that new guy luck. My first post on BWE was of a 41lb butt. The first fish I had ever had to gaff myself and the second fish I had ever caught on my kayak.

Here is an excerpt from that post(I was fishing a sardine on a c rig)..."In 55ft of water my clicker made a little noise, and again I thought that the kelp fairy had visited me and my little buddy. The clicker made some more noise, this time in a decidedly unkelpish manner. I stared at my rod dumbfounded. What do I do? What is happening? What is down there, and why is it messing with me? With growing fear I pulled my rod from its holder and as the line again loaded with the weight of some surely hideous leviathon, I swung and the rod bent. Idiot! Now what?

I vaguely remembered something about reeling, maybe keep some pressure on it. The fight was all vertical with a little back and forth, when I saw color, I realized this was gonna be a bit of baptism by fire. Every article about catching halibut from a kayak that I have read, stresses the difficulty and danger. Gents, this was only my second fish on this boat, the other being a foolish 14 inch calico. I prepped my gaff, and game clip and cleared my deck, all the while praying to an assorted pantheon of lower gods, and trying to keep pressure on the butt while he was doing his head shake thing. He freaked out on me three times and on the third time up, I sunk the gaff.

Somewhere between seeing color and sinking the gaff, my forebrain shut down. This was evident after I wasted an inordinate amount of time trying to get the game clip through gills and out mouth instead of in mouth and out through gills. Twice he almost pulled me in, and I must have hit him with the billy club about a hundred times in between using my gaff to rip at his gills and soft vitals. At one point I made the very dumb move of trying to stab him in the head, and as the knife slid across his armored skull, he grinned and laughed. It was a dark laugh, an evil laugh, a graveyard laugh. My bladder loosened, and the world swam before my eyes. This was it, he was gonna win. He was gonna take me down there with him to stay, forever and ever with all the little fishees.

My thoughts turned to my wife and family. What were they going to do without me? I had to live! With new found resolve, I rallied, and the rest became a blur. From the little I remember, there was a lot of screaming and flailing about. There was certainly alot of splashing. At one point I believe there may have even been a small fire. Some kindly passerby must have motored over and put it out."

Anyways, that is the way I remember it.

[j mo]

lol-x2. good stuff right there whizz b.

[dsafety]

This is one of the best how-to-do-it fishing technique posts in recent memory. Thanks to all who have contributed. Now I know how to land one. I just need to figure out how to catch one now.

Bob