Big Halibut

If you are in search of some monster sized halibut to fill your freezer back home, then you must head up to Alaska to go halibut fishing.  The size and the amount of halibut that are swimming in the cold waters up north is amazing.  Most of the time, people who wake up very early for a full day of halibut fishing are back home with their limit within just a few hours.  There are just that many fish to be caught.

Fishing Deep Water For Alaskan Halibut

Most people who go after the halibut figure they need to be fishing in 300-500 feet of water.  That is actually not the case all of the time.  Many extra large 200 lb halibut are caught in just 150 feet of water.  This makes for a much more interesting fight with the fish too.  When you begin to pull up a monster halibut from five hundred feet of water, it can turn into a very boring catch which nobody really wants to be a part of.

Shooting the Halibut When they Reach the Surface

One of the most common forms of killing a large halibut is to shot it with a lead shot.  There are different types of ways to shot the halibut, but the safest and most popular way is to use what is called a bang stick.  This delivers a shot from a .22 caliber bullet which goes right through the halibuts head and sometimes can hit the brain and create an instant kill which is desired.  The large halibut can really damage the cockpit of the boat if they are brought over still alive.

Packing Halibut and Taking The Meat Home

One thing you will all want to do is bring some of your fresh caught halibut back home with you.  That is actually the most popular thing to do for all visitors who fish in Alaska.  They all want to bring home halibut.  It is even more popular than bringing home salmon these days because the value of the halibut is so much higher.  Nobody should worry at all, the towns in Alaska are well aware of the goal of the fishermen.  They are prepared to pack up and vacuum seal all of your fish within just hours of it being caught.  And once it is all processed, they will bring it back to your fishing lodge and store it in the freezers until it is time for you to take everything home.  Most people end up taking with them over 50 pounds of halibut on the airplanes.  Sometimes for people who catch a several hundred pound halibut, there will be some options to actually just ship some of the meat back to your home state.

That’s right, its halibut derby time again in Alaska, and there is not much time left to catch the jackpot halibut this year.  Currently, the leading halibut is coming in at 273 pounds and was caught by Mark Hilts from Grand Rapids, Minnesota.  Also, there are a couple of halibut in the 250 pound range that were landed in July too.

Weather has been typical Alaska weather, tiny bit of sun, tons of overcast and some rain.  Water conditions have been a little bit nasty several of the past few days with quite a few out of town anglers getting a bit sick out there.  But hey, its derby time, and you got to be able to play with the big barn door halibut if you are going to have any shot.

One of the big questions of the year is where the heck is Deep Creek Fishing Lodge right now in this derby?  Haven’t seen crusty man Steve Moe at the weigh in scales yet, so not sure if he has been able to get out of bed to do some fishing lately?  But, knowing him, he will probably be sliding in the winning halibut on the last day of the tournament.

We took hundreds of pictures on the trip to Deep Creek Fishing Lodge in Kenai, Alaska. Here are a few of them.  The pictures are all from early June 2010. During the fishing trip, we fished the salt water for halibut, the river for king salmon, and a remote glacier fed lake for lake trout.  Some of the greatest times were spent just sitting around the fishing lodge which was located just next to Deep Creek, Alaska.  The staff and the guides and the owner of the Deep Creek Lodge are all excellent people.  With the views across the channel that were to die for, it was a vacation of lifetime that will not ever be forgotten.

One of the most spectacular parts of the fishing lodge experience was taking the float plane to the desolate lake to go fishing for trout. We caught all kinds of trout within just a few hours and then we fried them all up afterwards.  It was super tasty and alot of fun at the same time.

The fishing lodge is called Deep Creek Fishing Club and it is located in Kasilof, Alaska.  There is another deep creek fishing lodge so you need to make sure you fish the one with the captain called Captain Crusty.  Otherwise you won’t be getting the same experience you see in the pictures above.  The first night that you spend at the lodge, you will probably dig into a massive dinner of Alaska King Crab legs which should get your fishing vacation started off right.

Here is a brief overview in video of my first fishing trip to Alaska.  We visited the Kenai Peninsula and fished for halibut, trout, and salmon at the Deep Creek Fishing Club.

This place is amazing.  The first day we went out on the ocean and fished for Halibut.  There were two boats of us, 4 people on each boat, and one captain and another crew member per boat too.  All eight of us caught our limit of two halibut each.  The largest halibut of the day was 69.4 pounds on the scale outside the lodge.  It was great fun.  The weather out on the water was a bit choppy, but nothing too bad, infact nobody even got sea sick.  It did get a bit windy towards the end of the day

Kasilof float fishing

On the second day, we went fishing on the Kasilof River on the Kenai Peninsula.  Some of the video is also from salmon fishing on this river.  The fishing that day was pretty good for our drift boat.

We brought 3 salmon to the boat, and had a total of 5 salmon strikes.  We released two of the salmon because they were wild king salmon, and we kept one that was a hatchery fish.  Our guide Todd who works for the Deep Creek Fishing Club was excellent.  He had been guiding tourists who come to Alaska to fish for over twenty years now.

On the final day of our trip, we chartered a small airplane to fly us to some remote lake across the channel.  We landed and started fishing for lake trout.  We were using salmon eggs, and our group of eight caught about 15 trout in about one hour.  Next, our guides and Capta

fly-in lake fishing

in Steve aka Captain Crusty fixed up all the fish on the side of the lake with a bunch of charcoal, and we had some awesome fish tacos.  They setup a nice table and there was everything you could need for a great meal including wine and beer and best of all fresh caught trout for our taco meat.

Please enjoy the video of the fishing trip to the Deep Creek Fishing Club:

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Alaska Halibut Fishing Boats

The first morning of our Alaskan fishing trip, we decided to go out on the salt water and try out halibut fishing.  We were fishing in the Cook Inlet just south of Kenai, Alaska.  We had been told that the halibut fishing was great, and yes, there were tons of pictures of one hundred and two and three hundred pound halibut all over the fishing lodge, but you never really know what you are getting into.

The lodge that we stayed at (Deep Creek Fishing Lodge, owned by Steve Moe and his wife Vivian) has two 28 foot boats that they use on the salt water for halibut. These boats are awesome to say the least.  Below is a picture of the halibut boats so you can get a feel for what I am talking about.  They are perfect for halibut fishing and the potentially nasty Alaskan weather too.

halibut fishing on Cook Inlet

Once we started our journey just a mile away to the launch site, things got really interesting.  I have used many launch ramps before, but nothing quite like the deal they got going in Ninilchik, Alaska.  Basically, you trailer your boat down to the “launch site” and take your boat off your car trailer.  Then the crew down there completely takes over.  What they do is they use a crane that has a trailer hitch on it, and they back your boat up into the water.  Next, you start your engine and pull off the trailer and away you go.
Here is a video of the Ninilchik launch ramp for small boats:

It was wild to see, and amazingly quick and easy.  The same deal when you pull your boat out later in the day.  And the total fee for this service is $55  per day.

Once we got out about 20 miles, we started our day halibut fishing.  The deal was each of us had our own pole.  Our captain Skye and Jeremy did a great job of loading up our hooks with weights and bait all day long.  The halibut bait that we used was cod fish, herring, and octopus.  The fishing line was pretty heavy duty.  The leaders were about 30 feet long and the final portion was some 300lb test line.  So I wasn’t too worried about anything every breaking free on us.  Here is a picture right before we started catching halibut.

We were fishing in about 180 feet of water, and there was about two knots of current.  So we all had some considerable amount of fishing line out.  But, within a few minutes of dropping down our poles, we started noticing that something was beginning to bite on our halibut poles.  My pole was the first to go off, so I began reeling it in.  After a few minutes, and not too much of a fight at all, it was a false alarm, just a couple pound cod.  But we pulled it overboard, and the deckhands began cutting it up and said we could surely use it for bait for the halibut.

It wasn’t too much longer until some of the other fishing poles went off, and this time it was halibut action.  Some of the halibut that we caught were between 20-50 pounds.  No 100 pound halibut today, but we limited out our 2 halibut per person within two hours, and that was pretty good.  The weather was starting to pick up with some relatively heavy winds and some light rain and moderate seas, so we decided to call it a day right after landing the final fish.  And back in we went to put our boat back on the trailer.

Alaskan Halibut Fishing near Homer,AK

A super great day halibut fishing, and I was most excited about being able to bring a ton of fish home and share it with family and friends, and especially my wife who told me to make sure to come home with some halibut or else… Here are some more fishing pictures from the day we caught all the halibut in Alaska.

Deep Creek Fishing Club

Fishing in Alaska is something brand new for me.  Going to a true fishing lodge is also something brand new for me.  It’s been just about 7 hours since we landed, and I think I just might be hooked for life.

Alaska is such a beautiful place, and by the looks of all the pictures on the walls of the Deep Creek Fishing Lodge, we are probably going to be in for some super great fishing over the next four days.  Tomorrow we are heading out on the ocean or salt as our captain Steve who is the owner of the Deep Creek Fishing Lodge says.  We are going to be in search of some halibut, which he says we will be sure to catch within minutes.  Our plan is to go salmon fishing in the local river the next day.   I can’t wait, this is exactly what I have been waiting for, the chance at catching a monster halibut up here in Alaska.

So here is the quick summary of this Alaskan fishing trip so far.  1) We left San Francisco airport for Seattle, then took a second plane to Anchorage, then a final 3rd small plane to Kenai.  All of the travelling was a total of about 9 hours.  Once we landed in Kenai, a woman from the lodge picked us up and we took the Hummer about an hour until we arrived at the Deep Creek Fishing lodge.

The Deep Creek Fishing Lodge is amazing in many ways.  First off, it is a true wooden log lodge.  All of the smaller cabins that are for guests to sleep in are wooden logs too.  And it sits on a bluff which is about 50 feet above the sea level, so you have a perfect view across the 38 mile channel to the other side where there are several 11,000 foot peaks/volcanoes to look at.  Please enjoy the pictures of the lodge as well as the videos, its super impressive.  If the views and the background aren’t enough for you, you will definitely be impressed with the staff and owners of the lodge.  Steve who is the owner is full of all kinds of fishing stories. Tonight at dinner (king crab legs and a massive mix of cold seafood for starters) Steve said that he has been fishing these exact waters for over 25 years now and is one of the top captains in the area.

He said he won 9 derbys within that time period, so I am feeling pretty good about our chances at a nice halibut or two or five.  The rest of the staff is also super great, and very helpful and there to help you out whenever you need anything.

Since it is early June, the one odd thing so far has been how light it is.  It’s 11:30pm right now, and although I know I need to go to sleep to be rested for fishing in the morning, I just can’t.  It’s so light outside, and I am getting ready to take some pictures of across the channel to get some good sunset shots of the volcanoes…. Who could blame me.

Some good stories to come soon, I’m not sure if I will be able to sleep at all tonight.  Sarah is coming to wake us all up tomorrow moring at 5:00am for a 5:30 breakfast…. life is great up here at this Alaskan fishing lodge.

Here is a photo looking past the Deep Creek Fishing Lodge and out over the water.  The mountains with snow on them across the channel are 38 miles away.