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What stays on hook best- herring, anchovies, sardine. Hooligan??

Personally, I like salmon belly for the win, but I'm not sure that's legal. gotta research. Don't have any anyway, but there is next year, or later in the summer.

Gotta get the Rubber Ducky off the garage door frame and do some serious "sport" halibut hunting this year, if my wife quits having "ideas".

This surf fishing ain't cutting it. At least not yet.

I prefer jigging to bait. You can drop down a paper lunch bag full of cut herring as a bait bomb.


For durability, can't beat octopus. But durability is a bit oversold as once the scent is washed out of the bait, not worth keeping it on the hook

I’ll use octopus or squid and herring or sardines or mackerel. I expect to lose the herring but the squid and octopus stay fishing.

Rubber sanddabs and rubber crab are good too with scent if you don’t mind fishing artificials.

Jigs out fish bait at least 3 to 1 as far as halibut goes. Octopus will stay on the hook a long time. When we used herring I would salt it down for a few days prior to going fishing. The salt helps to toughen the soft flesh.

Heavy salt brine will toughen 'em up. I only have experience with herring.


Humpies are legal for bait - any part

A little shot of WD40 will up the 'but take...

Yes it will!

WD40 rocks for a quick pick me up. 😀

Half of a kitten works good.

Which half?

Right or left? 😀

The back half is the cat's ass

Belly is a no go for coho, king, and sockeye. Yes for pink and chum


Fresh is best, and what stays on the hook best isn’t necessarily the best bait at any given time.

Well played!

Very well played!

You gonna cut cat or fish?!
😆

I know the. BTDT. The charter guy was appalled, but I caught half again as many as anyone else on the boat. He made me bait my own hook tho....



I'll take your word. Kinda what I thought - thanks. Don't have to research it now.

I was in a charter this past weekend for halibut. One of the guys fishing brought WD-40, we all limited out 2 hours before he did and no one else had WD-40 on their herring.

I'm here all week

Wait a sec, king fishing opens tomorrow . . . I might be MIA

Walk down the dock in SE in the good old days (derby days) and the boats preparing to fish all stank of WD. Fishing out of Kodiak no one used it. We tried it on one boat I fished on and had better days under worse conditions with a bigger average than ever before. Keep it handy and I believe you will find it improves things.... except the smell. one of my least favorites.

I agree but just like anything fish can be fickle. I can think about several cases when halibut would ONLY eat a particular bait. One time I had fresh squid and octopus, my other buddy fished mackerel (or sardines I don’t recall) and my other buddy fished salted herring. We were all committed to our baits for most of the day but the ONLY fish caught came from herring. We switched after several hours to the few remaining herring and finished up the limit. Halibut eat everything but not always anything.

Years ago a bunch of us bachelors from C-shift took an annual trip to Uklulet every spring. I fished the starboard stern quarter with the same darts as everyone else but only I caught fish that day. I caught all but 2 fish of the 20 fish boat limit and I fished the same gear. I gave the Pt. Wilson dart a little bend and that alone caused the fish to ignore the other 9 or 10 darts in the water at the same time.

Fish are weird… 😀

Posted above right after surf fishing mouth of Kenai for halibut. Reason I asked is I had two herring left from s previous attempt and a fresh pkg of sardines from the hardware store. The herring seemed to stay on the hook better, but I only used one sardine toward the end, in rough surf. Not a good comparison maybe.

You might say I was just floundering around - (herring caught)

OMG - you ate a Starry? Hope you had a bucket of tartar sauce to choke it down

The meat doesn't taste terrible, the issue is it releases enzymes when it dies that turns the flesh to mush in a few hours.

I think you may be confusing this with arrowtooth flounder. Starry just rank low on taste and texture. Arrowtooth have enzymes, like you said that turns them to bitter mush.

The bigger, filet-able starrys seem to come in close when the kings run, so we filet them up sometimes. They're not top-shelf fare, but they're not bad. We're not fish snobs. (Better than them Irish suckers too! 😆)

I've never tried arrowtooth, but have eaten starry and it wasn't that bad.

Oh lord.

I have filleted a bunch of Irish lords and they are not all alike... generally for Asians and they made them quite palatable.

Arrowtooth is inedible bitter mush.

they work well as halibut bait....

Salted herring.

Back from the Hills

The flounder tasted ok- I'll probably do it again. Went well with the lobster main dish.

First off, I bled it immediately - never hurts anything for taste . Unlike the first time years ago, I looked up info and recipes, then KISS.

One one side of skinless fillets, I put garlic powder, fresh ground pepper, salt, breaded in corn meal, pan fried in butter.

The breading gave it a slight crust and held the patties together. most of the flavor came from the seasoning - almost no flavor from the fish itself. Texture inside the slight crust was about like mashed taters.

I read on line that the"fishy taste" could be removed by a milk soak.

If you don't want to taste fish, why the hell are you eating fish??? Wierd!!!!