WILD BLOG: The trophy halibut of Montague: 100-pounders a'plenty
POSTED June 21, 2009 / 8:40 p.m.

Anyone who says halibut don’t fight and that catching them is like reeling up a sheet of plywood hasn’t experienced Montague Island in June.

For the past three weeks, anchoring in 70 to 90 feet of water in the shallows off the southern tip of Montague, we’ve been enjoying the very best Alaska has to offer. Big fish after big fish, boatloads of 100-plus pounders, releasing more than a dozen trophy lingcod a day, and seeing everything from breaching humpbacks to pods of killer whales.

All month long, I’ve been enjoying watching people live out their ultimate fishing adventure, the fishing trip of a lifetimes, capped with a trophy halibut from the Gulf of Alaska.

The scene: Montague Island is located approximately 60 miles from Seward. The large island, which has robust Sitka blacktail deer and black bear populations, helps create Prince William Sound. Big halibut flock to the island in June, emerging from the deep water of the Pacific to the food-rich waters flowing out of the sound.

There’s almost always current, sometimes intense flows, ripping past the island. We anchor there, plunking out baits on the bottom, creating a scent trail to attract the fish.

When a big halibut inhales a salmon carcass or clamps onto a sockeye head in 70 feet of water, it goes berserk once it feels a 20/0 Eagle Claw circle hook dig into the side of its face. The halibut will charge off to the side of the boat, sometimes on 50-yard runs, then race the opposite direction. They violently shake their head, trying to spit the hook, and even splash at the surface as they try to get away from the boat.

In the past three weeks, we’ve returned from Montague with four, five, six, even seven halibut topping 100 pounds. There are plenty of 40- to 80-pounders in the mix as well, along with a handful of the more common chickens many of the other charter boats catch.

Derby time: June is derby month out of Seward. The biggest fish caught by a derby entrant takes home $10,000. We’ve caught several of the daily winners.

Capt. Eric, who runs the sister boat to the boat I run, got a customer into a 298-pounder. It would have easily jumped to first place, but his customer didn’t want to spend the $10 to enter. Now a 250-pounder has a solid grip on first.

We held onto third place for the first two weeks of the month, before a slightly bigger fish was brought in by another boat. But there’s a good week and a half left and we’ll be out every day trying to get into more of those Montague Island hawgs that make Seward such a great place.

-Capt. Andy Martin

JS note: Capt. Andy Martin run a charter boat out of Seward, Alaska. His Web site is www.wildriversfishing.com