Lift, drop. Two steps. Simple.
How you lift and drop makes all the difference. Except when it doesn’t. Some people lift with a jolt and control the drop. Some prefer a rhythmic and subtle amplitude, careful to keep things under control. Some are so busy telling stories and reporting the week’s news that there doesn’t seem to be any discernible technique to catching halibut with a jig.
There are those, of whom I am often one, who prefer a circle hook, the crock pot method of bottom fishing. Get it down there and wait. It might make you feel better to set the hook, but the physics of that response to a strike don’t necessarily increase your odds of a hook up. I know people who always set circles for good measure, an understandable and worthwhile practice.
I was amped to be out on the polished ocean and was game for the necessary work of jigging. We approached the spot. I waited for the cue, then sent it down.
The drift was perfect. On the other side of the boat, Abby hooked bottom for a second as we came up the slope but got it free. Mandy, the most precise, textbook example of halibut jigging fundamentals I know — she always catches the most fish — was fishing off the stern.
I imagined the story I told with my jig: a glow in the dark bacon cheeseburger, that smelled like herring, bouncing across the vast, uneven, sandy living room floor. It would be too much for a halibut to resist and it was.
I felt a heavy weight, then the telltale thrashing of the head. I cranked down and set the hook. The halibut dove and stripped line from the reel. There’s no use trying to be overly descriptive about what the line and the reel and the rod tip did at this point because it’s not as romantic as a king salmon, steelhead or even trout on a dry fly. This is a halibut, 286 feet below.
I started the long, arduous task of gaining line. I lifted and line stripped. I checked the drag. Tight. Big fish. Any loss of tension and that jig head would wiggle and create a larger hole. Lose tension then and the massive barb, a brutal weapon, could make its way back through the hole and we’d be left wondering.
Fishing without a line counter means you’re forced to focus on your angle, the tension on the line and keeping the tension off your lower back. Seeing a depth ruins all that. Because if 15 minutes later it’s 254 or 278 it can get in your head. Better there be a mystery.
I spotted color and reported the potential conclusion to the rest of the boat. Would it make a final desperate dive? Would we botch this critical last Act? A comedy turned tragedy?
We went back over the plan. The harpoon angle. Who would tie it off. Watch your hands, fingers and head. I eased it across the surface, Rob sank the harpoon and Mandy tied off the rope.
It was big, but not that big. Still, the biggest I’ve caught and a total riot for weekend warriors who have to pay attention to the amount of turns at the pump. Was it my technique? Luck? Both?
At just over 68 inches it was roughly 165 pounds. Yeah, I know 7-year olds from Homer catch 200 pounders at recess, but this isn’t Homer.
The day was made, the summer even. We went to shore for lunch in no hurry to get back to baiting hooks.
• Jeff Lund is a freelance writer based in Ketchikan. His book, “A Miserable Paradise: Life in Southeast Alaska,” is available in local bookstores and at Amazon.com. “I Went to the Woods” appears twice per month in the Sports & Outdoors section of the Juneau Empire.