Monterey 12/23/23

Overall pretty slow day, not too much action but we did manage a few halibut.  We got on the water around 9 from the coast guard. We targeted the area off cannery row, from 100-130ft. Bait was VERY hard to come by. I didn’t get any bait until about 1030 when a school of sardines came on the fish finder around 80ft down and I was able to pull up 3. I dropped a couple times on squid marks and managed a few throughout the day on the sabiki, it wasn’t thick enough for me to want to designate a rod with a squid jig but they were there. Anyway, I walked the sardines for over an hour before I found a halibut. I got bit in about 120ft of water, and while I was bringing the fish up my other rod got hit but got away with my sardine. Ended up landing a nice 20lber but was out of bait at that point. I paddled around and got a few squid, which I sent down on the 3 way swivel. About 20 minutes go by and I hear Sonny say he’s on a big one, so paddle over to take a few pictures then my rod gets hit. I get a hook in the fish, feels good, got it about halfway off the bottom and my knot failed. I’m guessing it had a fray in it or the fishes teeth hit it just right but we’ll never know. After that I decided to check my other rod. I reel up and my squid caught another squid, trying to mate with it I guess, so I took it off and sent it back down. As soon as it hit the bottom it got hit by a hali. On the drop! Doesn’t get too much sweeter than that. I brought up a little 11lber and we pretty much called it a day.

great catches.

Right on!  Great job.   

Nice deep water halibut catching!

Excellent work!  Way to go!

Nice to see someone is still fishing this time of year, good catches!

Christmas Halibuts, Perfect.....someone's on the "nice" list

Love the details in your stories. Great pics of you and Sonny.