Chasing Brown Flatties, My Secret Passion

I love fishing for a lot of reasons, most of all I just do it for the halibut. I love hooking, catching and often releasing halibut, and like a lot of California Pacific ocean fisherman have a couple of often-fished places I frequently visit.

Let me start at the bottom, which is to say here in San Diego. I've had a lot of luck catching legal flatties in the 8 to 12 pound range from the sands of Imperial Beach,. I have a 10-foot monster surf road, a nice sand spike and a totally functional but not particularly remarkable spinning rod loaded with thin 20 pound test that I use in the surf line. Imperial Beach is a hoot. You almost always get hits and a hook up if you can put your bait just beyond the surf line.

I use a fresh dead squid, anchovies or a red and white spoon to catch halibut at Imperial Beach and most of the places I fish for halibut here on the San Diego coast. I also use a 4 to 6 ounce torpedo shaped lead weight set up in a slider rig with about five or six foot leader and big ass laser sharpened hook to hold the bait. Halibut are bottom fish and most often take the bait from behind. I try to remain particularly mindful of the condition of my bait, and put on fresh bait if I think it's been repeatedly raked by halibut or nipped at by crabs. the best time to fish for halibut is on the ebb or in slack water following and ebb tide. I heave my bait out, stick my rod in a five foot sand spike rod holder and grab a piece of the beach as I wait for a hit.

There's very little that's tentative or dainty about a halibut bite. You pretty much know there's a fish on your line by the giant dips your rod takes as the flatty grabs the bait and swims away. Catching a halibut and getting it to shore isn't like pulling cod up from a 200 foot hole.  Halibut are very strong fighters and are capable of long runs that make your reel thrum against its brakes.

Bringing a halibut through a surf line without losing it is a learned skill that's fun and instructive. Once I'm hooked up, I back pedal up the sand to increase the height of my line above wave tops.  I try and let the wave action move the fish towards the shore.  Halibut have a "soft" mouth and horsing a fish to shore is a sure way to lose it, or have your line break. Once hooked and moving towards the inner-tidal zone halibut will take off like a bullet train. If they run you need to control the rod and keep your eye on the point where your line enters the water. Let your reel's drag tire the fish out and eventually you'll see your flatty near the shore. That's when you reel like a maniac and approach the fish.

I have a collection of old chewed up fishing nets in my garage.Most are victims of my love affair with California's halibut population. Today, I try to make sure I use a fine mesh net to bag the fish to avoid damaging their tails, in the event I release it. If a halibut's tail is damaged during the catch it will generally become infected an cause the fish to die with two or three days.

Two other hard learned lessons on halibut fishing. Don't hesitate to switch to wire leader if you get a bite and feel the line sever. Also, big halibut have mouths full of Ginsu 2000-like teeth, be careful how you handle the fish, unless you want a new nickname like "Stubby" or "Two Fingered Jim."

A couple of other favorite halibut holes of mine is the back side of the surf line at Ocean Beach, just north of the entrance to Mission Bay and near the Coronado Bridge in San Diego Bay. But my all time favorite and most productive Halibut fishery is a small formerly private Beach in Orange County called Crystal Cove. Now a small state park, it was at Crystal Cove as a young teenager that I fell in love with halibut fishing. I still remember fishing there in the mornings on slack water and later in the day snorkeling parallel to the shore and counting scores of flatties sitting on the sandy bottom or flirting inches off the bottom in and out of the help bed. If you're new to Halibut fishing and want a first-rate California halibut experience where you'll have an excellent chance of catching a powerhouse legal halibut, drive south of Del Mar, CA and look for the signs on PCH directing you to this under fished paradise,

Oh and one of the other great species you'll catch at the Cove are tasty sweet sand dabs, the perfect fish for getting a youngster hooked on fishing in California saltwater.

Hmmm, all this writing about Halibut has excited the Viking genes that beat deep down inside me.I think I'll throw my new rod and reel in my massively manly SUV and head up the coast for some flatty fishing. That will be me in the raggedy shorts, cheap ass sandals, a tie dyed t shirt and big brimmed straw hat sitting next to a rod stuck in a sand spike rod holder up at Crystal Cove later this morning. Stop by and say "Hi!" I always have coffee in my thermos and a clean extra cup. Jim Forbes, off to go up the coast halibut fishing, 06/08/2006.