fishing for Pacific halibut is becoming ever more popular off the WA coast - the fishery is tightly regulated (good thing), this season the sport quota for the north coast is a litle over 80,000 lbs - there are 2 ports that can access the fishery, La Push and Neah Bay, both are Indian villages rather remote (4-5 hr drive) from the big population in the I-5 corridor (Seattle, etc)
the season opened Tuesday and we can fish Tues, Thurs, and Sat until the quota is reached - limit is one each and the fish run 20 to over 100# - the fish are in deep water 500-600' mostly on flat, sand bottom near complex bottom topography - much of the best grounds are protected in bottomfish reserve (good thing) so a lot of the effort goes to the secret hot spot 31 miles straight out from La Push in between the reserve and the deep dropoff into the Juan de Fuca canyon - boats from Neah Bay fish there as well, but they also visit spots further north
that's where we fish, and Tuesday was a beautiful day (not typical for this time of year), only 1 1/2 hr run to the grounds and I dead-drifted the whole time - you can catch and release the halibut easily with barbless hooks and since they have no swim bladder it doesn't hurt them - our limits included 2 @ 35#, 2@ 45#, and a 25 #er that we kept because it was the best way to clear a tangle - we also caught a 20# ling and a 5# black cod out there - we released 10 or 15 between 20 and 30# including 3 I caught on my 40# tuna flyline rig (old Seeker 660H, torium 16 w/50# spectra) with a 12 oz jig
after halibut limits we ran back to the "Rockpile", 10 miles from La Push and caught limits (2 each) of nice lings (~6-12#) and had the boat back on the trailer by 1 pm
Thursday weather was not quite as nice (2 1/2 hr run) but the worst thing was everybody showed up to go fishin (I live here, so I suppose they should have asked permission first) - it took over 1 1/2 hrs to get to the launch ramp!! oh well... fishin wasn't quite as good, our limits were smaller and I had to back into the seas to keep the lines down - still plenty of fun, and a new experience for a couple of the guys (from Montana) - after limiting we took the scenic route home, running into the coast at Cape Alava (20 mi N of La Push) and bumping back with multiple stops on inshore bottomfish (lings, cabezon, assorted rockfish)
I called off today's trip because of weather forecast - we could have done it but it would not have been fun - back at 'em on Tuesday, it's good to have a job with vacation benefits
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