Fisherman lands hefty halibut with wimpy gear

By PATRICE KOHL
Morris News Service - Alaska


An Anchor Point halibut charter captain commanded the art of using light tackle to prove you don’t have to take the sport out of halibut fishing to land a big fish.

For eight years, Art Aho has been using progressively lighter and lighter test line to catch bigger and bigger fish. On Tuesday he broke all his previous records and caught a 303-pound halibut on 30-pound test line.

Using light tackle attracts more fish and brings the sport back into halibut fishing, said Aho, who is a captain on the Ultimate, a charter boat owned by Catch-A-Lot charters.

“That fish is going to go sideways like a shark would fight you,” he said, referring to halibut caught on light tackle. “I’ve even had one jump clear of the water.”

Although fishermen using heavy tackle lower their risk of breaking a line and loosing a fish, they pay by hooking fewer fish and bogging down hooked fish, he said.

Cook Inlet’s strong tides tend to pull a halibut fisherman’s line and bait away from the bottom, where the halibut lay. To keep bait on the bottom, fishermen attach a lead weight near the bait. The greater the test line’s strength, the greater its diameter and the more weight it requires to prevent the bait from drifting.

But the bait isn’t the only thing that gets pinned down when using heavy weights.

“If you have a four-pound lead on a halibut line, and you hook a fish and you start to reeling him in, that lead is going to keep that fish in place,” he said. “And it’s going to keep that fish coming in straight up and down, flat, white side down, brown side up. That fish is pretty much going to stay flat.”

Aho said he began experimenting with light tackle as a halibut charter deckhand after one of the boat’s rods broke.

He dug out a spare rod, a red rod equipped with 80-pound test line, and which Aho now endearingly refers to as the Red Ranger. The Red Ranger’s test line was lighter than what the boat usually used and the event marked a turning point in Aho’s fishing career.

“All the charters out there use at least 100, but usually 120- and 130-pound test,” he said. “So here’s this rod with 80-pound test and for the next month that rod always caught the biggest and the most fish on our boat. The Red Ranger.”

In a recent conversation with an Alaska State Trooper, Aho said he was reminded of how heavy tackle has converted halibut fishing into a mechanical activity instead of a skilled pursuit in the minds of many fishermen.

“(The trooper said) ‘There’s no sport to it at all, you just crank them in, throw them on board and fillet them up,’” Aho said.

Aho said that’s not his style. Although fishing with lighter tackle requires more maintenance, Aho said he fishes all of his clients on 80-pound test instead of the usual 100- to 130-pound test, and uses three-pound weights instead of the usual four- and five-pound weights. It is more challenging to fight a fish on lighter tackle, but Aho said it’s well worth the extra effort.

“There’s nothing better than having a 40-pound fish peeling drag out of your reel,” he said. “I mean it’s just great. A 40-pound fish is a hard-fighting fish on light tackle.”

To land his 303-pound fish on 30-pound test line, Aho said he reeled for an hour and 40 minutes from 160 feet below.

The lighter the tackle, the more skill it requires to land a fish, he said. First, the drag on the reel must be set just right, and second, a fisherman must master the art of pulling a fish up with the pole and gathering up the line on the slack.

But while landing a fish on light tackle is harder, getting one hooked is easier, Aho said.

With light test, it is easier to keep the line running straight into the water directly below the boat, rather than at an angle running away from the boat. This allows the angler to attractively jig the bait.

To jig bait is to pull it up and down in an action that entices the fish and lifts the bait to where the fish can see it, Aho said.

When the bait drifts away from the boat and the line runs into the water at an angle, it’s difficult to efficiently bounce the bait.

“The bait just doesn’t lift up, it just sort of scoots,” he said.

Some might argue that in the dark depths of the ocean, halibut can’t see your bait anyway, but Aho said that is nonsense.

“They can see your bait,” he said. “Don’t let anyone ever tell you that a halibut can’t see your bait down there, because God gave them those big brown eyes for a reason.”

Patrice Kohl is a reporter for the Peninsula Clarion.