WILD BLOG: Stacked herring = like cotton candy for huuuuuge halibut
POSTED April 16, 2009 / 4:30 p.m.

Some like whole salmon heads. Others like a big chunk of octopus. But for me, when I am after trophy halibut, I swear by stacked herring.

Because they work.

Of all my halibut fishing secrets, I'm kind of reluctant to share this one, because it's so darn effective. I don't see many other charters use stacked herring to catch halibut. Hopefully they don't read this blog.

No other bait caught more trophy halibut on my boat last summer than stacked herring. Aside from being a big bait, which big halibut love, dangling 2- to 4-foot-long herring above the bottom could resemble a whole salmon. Or one gigantic herring.

Whatever it looks like, big halibut love the.

The salmon theory: Halibut definitely like salmon. I've caught halibut in Cook Inlet with whole sockeye salmon in their bellies. I've also caught halibut with salmon chunks in their belly. And they didn't steal them from someone's hook.

A theory I subscribe to is halibut begin to key on salmon once the killer whales show up. The big mammals crash into schools of salmon, devouring them, but also sending lots of pieces, and whole, injured fish, to the bottom. The halibut come across these slayed salmon, and gobble them up.

The only problem with using a whole salmon for bait where I fish, in Alaska, is it's illegal. You can't use sport-caught fish.

The stacked herring is a solution. It's a big bait. And it probably tastes a lot like salmon once I'm done with it.

On the way to the fishing grounds, I'll often soak my herring in Pautzke's Nectar. The red and green liquid is nothing more than an byproduct of curing Pautzke's famed single salmon eggs. Once the herring has soaked in the stuff, you can bet it has an even fishier taste, that of a salmon that just was just knocked into next week by a 2,000-pound orca.

Seductively dangling from one of my rods just above the bottom in 230 feet ofwater, lunker halibut can't resist them.

Rigging up: Stacking herring is easy. I take a 20/0 Eagle Claw circle hook, push the point through the eyes of a herring, thread the hook through it, and then stick thebait again in its midsection. I then pull the herring up the leader and add another.

Then another.

That's all there is to it.

Smaller halibut, like those 40-pounders my buddies catch in Oregon (I call them chickens because they look more like 20-pounders to me) rarely touch the stacked herring. They prefer a little smaller baits.

But big halibut, 60 pounds on up (those are 120-pounders by some people's scales), will nail them.
-AM