Interestingly enough, I really didn’t get into halibut fishing until the mid-70’s when I had run of my cabin cruiser and started fishing for them with a wire line trolling outfit.
I never had a whole lot of interest in the flatfish before then, not having easy access to a boat, but when I had my “internship†trolling for stripers with the wire line, I started catching halibut with some regularity. From then, I grew to have the attitude, “if you’re gonna catch them, might as well do it right!â€
With the wire line outfit, I found all you needed to do to switch from stripers to flatties was to lengthen the distance between the three hoochie skirts and then shorten the dropper to the sinker from 3 – 5 feet long (for the stripers) down to 1 – 2 feet long for the halibut. If you have no idea what I’m talking about, just figure that what I did was to bring dinner closer to the bottom hugging flatfish.