Have faith in your Captain:

Have faith in your Captain:

  Kerin and the boys were back at it this week. Faced with a big tide and some dirty water, Kerin needed to get the guys that missed last week out for some halibut.  

   Kerin sent those guys some very impressive photos while we were on the boat last week. I’m sure he roused them all last week.

  He found 2 other guys to go. This gave us 3 passengers and enough to run.

The Minus tide in the morning really put a hurt on the water clarity. 

  I started off cruising out to South Hampton Shoals for a quick look. It wasn’t fishable. The current was still moving at 4 knots. Even if it slowed right now we would be waiting for 2 hrs before we would have some fishable water.

I went down the sand bar north of the Olympic Circle in Berkley.  This area is a well known, close to home halibut haunt. It’s marked with Yellow buoys. A, B, and C buoys are east of XOC buoy, E, F and G are west of XOC. These buoys are used by sail boaters and their clubs. Saturdays and Sundays you really can’t fish it late in the day because there are so many sailboats out there. With their colorful sails it looks like a large perennial flower garden on the weekends.

  We covered allot of ground here. We were rewarded in-between E and F buoy with a double hook up. One halibut kept at 24 inches.  The other was 21 inches, just short of the 22 inch size limit.  I circled this area a few times only to pick up one more short fish.  

 We left Berkley and headed down south.

   We ran to Alameda.

  The fish in the south bay are definitely bigger and seem to be holding in an area I have mastered. This area, in front of Bay Farm Island, there is big hole with a large spur that seems to give halibut a great ambush point for stacked up bait being pushed out of this large hole on the out going (ebb current).  It’s produced some fish in the last few months.

We trolled around Alameda, all over the place, for 2-3 hours without a bite. Andre and Gonzo lost a bit of confidence in our abilities. Kerin didn’t care much.  They got quiet for a while. The tension was thick.  These down times or times when the fishing seems slow is a good time to stay on the gear. Check it often. Normally we run all of the gear every 15 minutes. In this case we continue to have a rod being checked. I had to stay on Cody and after a while it got to be like clock work.  The gear was looking good. At this point it was just a question of when we were going to hook up. 

  The tide got right; the bait was stacking in the hole, the birds were diving and everything was falling into place.

  The middle rod laid over and the line started pealing as the 20 pound fish grabbed the hook. We boxed that one after some extremely accurate line untangling and gaff placement.

The High 5’s were slapping as our long day has now turned into a fishing trip.

  I immediately marked an x and proceeded to give my customers a late in the day work out as we boxed 3 more large halibut. 

We went home Happy and content as we found them, caught them and now we will eat them.

I love to see Happy Peeps and returning passengers need to be happy.

If you are thinking of getting out on a halibut trolling trip now’s the time to give me a call.  This isn’t the time of year for last minute calls.  Wed Thursday and Friday trips only.

  Take a day, beat the heat, BBQ some quality fish.  I can help you be the hit of the party.

LET’S GO!!!