Credit-Alaska Tours

Simple tackle and tactics for luring in huge halibut

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Tackling this delicious predator—many consider it the finest tasting fish—is not for the faint of heart. After you fight one of these barn doors for a half-hour and finally get it to the side of the boat, it will typically descend back down to the bottom, forcing you to do it all over again.

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Amazingly, halibut are similar to channel cats in that they will follow a scent trail for kilometres to find the source. That means you need to stay anchored in place and wait patiently for the fish to come to your bait, which should be as savoury as possible (many halibut anglers use the fatty strip of oily meat from the belly of a chum salmon). Use a beefed-up three-way swivel rig, with a one- to three-pound weight at the bottom and the baited circle hook hanging two to five feet above it.