Landed my first Halibut today! Fished off the point near the rock arch, casting a 4 inch swim bait, brown and silver in color. After a few casts, I thought that I had snagged some kelp, when all of a sudden-- head shaking!!! What a great feeling. It was around 22" but I let it go so could catch it's children in a couple of years. Fished for a couple of more hours, but no other hits. I snagged and lost all my swimbaits after a while, so I used some 4 inch mojo grubs. Has anyone had any success with these? I think Im going to head out again tomarrow. Anyone have any good halibut recipies?

Tight Lines, Sherwin

Nice job! Never had any success on halibut with grubs but that's probably because I rarely fish them. I tried those wham things a couple of times but they didn't work for me. I even tried them in a "wide open" bite where I was catching short hallies left and right on the 3 inch Big Hammer then switched to the wham and nothing, switched back - game on! It could've been because the whams were quite larger than the Hammer but I'm not too anxious to try them again.

That arch rock is where I got my first legal. It was 23" and caught on a 5 inch Bleeding Olive Herring Big Hammer. I was new at fishing swimbaits and had caught a 16 incher there the day before (I still remember how excited I was). The next day I had about an hour so I ran down to the rock. There were a couple of bait fishermen there. I asked how it was going - they said slow. Ignoring their "you're not going to catch anything with that" looks on their faces I proceeded to throw the swimbait. On my third cast I feel this little tap and slam! - I'm on!! Got it in, measured it, and walked to my car. I'm pretty sure the bait fishermen were baffled.

Recipes - it may not be the healthiest but grab a box of the McCormick Beer Batter stuff, follow the instructions but mix it with Guiness, then deep fry. YUM!

Congrats on the legal! Sounds like the flatties really like swimbaits!

Way to go Sherwin! Those head shakes stoke me too. I'm a believer in the swimbaits,light line, and light tackle.

Many happy returns. :)

Hey Sherwin,
Way to go. http://new.seafood.com/retail/recipes.html has a lot of recipe pages, I like simply-seafood for their variety.
Fishtales