Halibut and lings from North ... Video

Great stuff there! I made a short barbed gaff instead of a shark hook. (local stores didn't have any) I bought a large gaff hook and lashed and stapled it to a short piece of curtain rod. Drilled the dowel and tied a loop of rope. I also brazed a barb onto the gaff point. My float is attached to a 15' rope that's in a stuff sac to keep it from getting caught on anything. The rope has a ss carabiner for quick connection. Orginally I made the rope and float for my harpoon set up. That is until I found out you can't use a harpoon in California. Of course not! IN CALIFORNIA YOU CAN'T USE ANYTHING THAT WORKS... I have yet have a chance to deploy it tho... Hopefully this is the year. Congrats on your pac hali and huge ling. Is that in California, or up in Wash/Or?

If it makes you feel any better Washington doesn't allow gaffs to be used on any bottom fish other than halibut.
There were both caught in Washington during our 4 day halibut season.

4 day? Wow. Folks are upset here over the August closure, but we still get 4 months.

The four days are broken up over two weeks. Thursday and Saturday only.

Why so restrictive? I assumed, probably naively that the stae of tge halibut fishery would improve the further north. 

The fishing is too good. This is the area that holds the best fish and one of the few areas where kayaks have a decent chance of catching a halibut. This year Area 3&4 were allotted a little over 100,000 pounds of quota and according to WDFW we just went over that by about 5k. Of course this is all based off of their wild ass guesses of how many fish were actually caught. Leave it to the government to make a quota based on weight and then not weigh a single fish.

Sweet fish and vids! Thanks for posting.

Great stuff there! I made a short barbed gaff instead of a shark hook. (local stores didn't have any) I bought a large gaff hook and lashed and stapled it to a short piece of curtain rod. Drilled the dowel and tied a loop of rope. I also brazed a barb onto the gaff point. My float is attached to a 15' rope that's in a stuff sac to keep it from getting caught on anything. The rope has a ss carabiner for quick connection. Orginally I made the rope and float for my harpoon set up. That is until I found out you can't use a harpoon in California. Of course not! IN CALIFORNIA YOU CAN'T USE ANYTHING THAT WORKS... I have yet have a chance to deploy it tho... Hopefully this is the year. Congrats on your pac hali and huge ling. Is that in California, or up in Wash/Or?

The harpoon law should be changed to allow them by next year.  We had a public meeting on pacific halibut up here in Eureka two weeks ago.  CADFW said they are going to change that.  Another change coming is 1 rod and 2 hooks for Pacifics to comply with the federal regs.  We also discussed the less than 1% allocation we get here in California and how its going to be a long hard uphill fight to get more even though a survey done by boat discovered we have 100,000 lbs that can be sustainably harvested here.  The IPHC believes that all pacific halibut go to the Gulf of Alaska to successfully spawn, but from data and experiences from fishermen in California this is not true.  Data suggests that Pacific halibut spawn here in California.  Another survey is going to be done here again in California and this time they will be surveying further south to Fort Bragg and beyond.