![]() ![]() There will likely be many smaller male fish around the bigger females so if you catch one chances are he was not alone. When you get a bite hit the MOB (Man Overboard) or mark the waypoint on the GPS. If you can find an area that is holding multiple bait balls spend some time and make several different drifts crisscrossing the zone as much as possible. The bait balls travel and the halibut travel with them. Keep an eye on the meter, especially if you are fishing an exclusively sandy area. When in this pre-spawn stage there are a couple things to look for. They will come right into the shoals in as little as 10-foot depths to lay their eggs. Specifically, these are conditions where the water is above 66 degrees (at least in San Diego, but likely cooler to the north) and a somewhat off color water with low visibility to keep predators from their eggs. The females will feed heavily on baitfish waiting for just the right conditions to spawn. This gives us a much better shot of connecting on this sometimes illusive quarry. More data can be found by going to the DFG website (clicking on the “Marine” tab and then looking under “Marine Regional Projects” for the studies of interest to you.įrom an angling perspective, as spring moves into summer we typically find the fish slowly moving into shallower water and therefore grouping up a bit more. The main stock is concentrated from Bodega Bay south, according to Tanaka, though some may be found all the way north to Washington. Study of the species turned up that one tagged 22-inch California halibut moved from Manhattan Beach all the way to Morro Bay. ![]() With gill nets gone, larger brood stock are available to help sustain the fish populations. These big males have played a large part in the comeback of the species as they are able to fertilize many more eggs than the younger males. “We have tagged males that were as large as 25 pounds although that is an exceptionally large male, they do get big,” he says. Another fact Tanaka shared was that the males do actually get bigger than most people think. He explained the current bag limit for recreational anglers north of Big Sur is three halibut per day but that it has been expanded to five halibut per day south of Big Sur. “There has been an abundance of squid on the coast and more so in the last six years than ever, so as always with good feed fish are bigger and there are more breeders.” “The fishery has certainly made a comeback,” California Fish and Wildlife marine biologist Travis Tanaka confirms to PCS. The improvements in the halibut fishery we are seeing were decades in the making so understand that recoveries take time, decades in some cases. And those that may not appear beneficial immediately begin to bear fruit with time. This proves that some regulations really work. Those regulations, incidentally, were passed in the early 1990s and went into enforcement in 1994 as the Marine Resources Protection Act, which is still in place today. But today, with the gill net regulation modifications keeping the commercial nets outside three miles off the coast, halibut fishing seems to continue improving every year. Many of today’s fishermen never experienced good halibut action when they were younger, so they pretty much have written off the game as something not worth their effort or attention. This fishery has made a huge comeback and now 40 pounders are fairly commonplace throughout the state-so maybe you’ll get to check that one off your bucket list. ![]() With the approach of summer, California halibut are slowly moving into the medium water depths to fatten up before working into the shallows to spawn. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |