This month’s blog was supposed to feature a helpful how-to video on halibut rigs. As we all know, life can be unpredictable, and sometimes things don’t go as planned. Instead of a video, it’s a story about the new Scent Striker Magnum, family, and a magical evening catching halibut.
Seven is the age of maturity in our household. Grandchildren achieving this status can have their first “boat camping” experience with Grandpasir and Grammy and leave their parents ashore. Lylah had become of age and eagerly anticipated her overnight. This fact begins our story.
Scent Striker Magnum for Halibut
However, a side note before the rest of the story. Scent Striker has been planning a new product line called Magnum for a while now. New tooling was required for Magnum’s launch, and with supply chain issues and all, their official 2023 debut was placed on hold. After the tooling arrived this spring, two hundred Magnums were made to test the tooling. The Magnum’s official debut is now in 2024.
A Magnum is like a Scent Striker Single, but bigger. It is fitted with an extra large center core sporting an inside diameter of .079.” A one-and-a-quarter-inch long fiber bundle surrounds the core.
What this means for halibut fishing is you can string a few Magnums on up to 300-pound test monofilament line, add in your favorite grub or squid skirt, soak the Magnum’s fiber in a boatload of DBS Striker Formula, and grab a halibut’s attention with a magnificent scent trail when deploying fishing gear.
To illustrate, pictured above is the curly tail grub rigged with fluorescent orange Magnums on 300-pound mono with a crimped-on 16/0 circle hook. This rig is a prominent actor in the rest of the story.
Family Boat Camping for Halibut
Lylah, you should know, gets seasick. We found this out last year when she turned seven. Boat camping was canceled that year, and we returned to shore with a little girl green in the gills. For Lylah’s sake this year, we picked a forecast with calm seas. We also picked a protected bay for anchoring. And, we were armed with seasick medicine for children. There are times out on the water when the magic happens. Lylah’s first successful boat camping night was one of them.
After the anchor was down and the sun was slowly setting, popping noises were heard in the distance. The water’s surface was like glass, except in the direction of the popping sounds. Here, the water’s surface was under constant disturbance.
In time, it became clear that baitfish were hitting the surface, and they were the cause of the strange sound and disturbance. Also, in time, the baitfish moved down the coastline and into the head of the bay, where we were anchored. Lylah and Grammy had gone to bed. The sun was down.
Halibut Success
However, having recently written about bait balls and predatory feeding habits, I grabbed the curly tail grub setup, dipped the Magnums in DBS Striker Formula, tipped the circle hook with a bit of leftover salmon belly, and dropped the bait to the bottom. The evening bait ball magic was too irresistible to miss.
The rod tip bounced after about five minutes of the bait’s bottom descent. I slowly cranked down on the reel without taking the rod out of the holder. A few cranks were all it took to embed the circle hook into the side of the jaw. Fish On! About ten minutes later, a nice thirty-inch halibut came to the surface, was gaffed, and brought aboard. The circle tail grub still looked good, so it went down to the bottom again.
The rod tip went down again while bleeding and preparing the thirty incher for the fish box. Twenty minutes at most had expired between pulling the first halibut aboard and the second bite. The rod tip did not bounce this time but took a sizeable downward dip and stayed there. Whoa, this one was bigger. After four runs to the bottom and a few other refusals to come aboard, a forty-nine-inch halibut was landed. Sixty-eight pounds of halibut in an hour. That was fun!
Alaska’s Natural Bait Ball Wonders Continue
The following morning, Lylah and Grammy awake, we witness hundreds of herring still in the bay. We watched them swim just below the water’s surface from the back deck while eating pancakes. At one point, we saw an eagle swooped down to catch herring for breakfast but somehow went into the water and had to swim to shore.
While Lylah didn’t catch halibut this trip, she showed keen interest in our natural surroundings. After summoning up some bravery, she touched the tail and the slippery side of one of the halibut. Wonders never cease.
If there is a fishing tip for this month, it is this. Take time to enjoy the magic of family through fishing. If you want help starting, I have two hundred Scent Striker Magnums ready-made and good for a halibut trip of your own. If you send me an email, I’ll put a few in an envelope and send them to you. When the two hundred are gone, the offer is over.
Happy Fishing!
Don Habeger
Founder