There is no one right way, but there many ways to catch halibut. Traps work, and there are times that you can only catch butts with a trap, just like there are also times you can only catch them on a single hook.
The idea that only small fish rake baits and drop them is totally absurd. I've seen eight inch mackerel with bite marks from thirty pound plus halibut where they grabbed it for an instant the dropped it making a huge V with what looked like icepick holes in the bait. If you fish them enough you can tell just by the teeth marks how big they are.
Here's a quote from an old kayak report of mine from back in 2006:
Quote:
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"Halibut... you ever have a day when they keep picking up and dropping the baits....well that's how the butt fishing was. Hit after hit, rake after rake, but all with dropped baits. I took off my traps and let them run hoping for a deeper set but no matter how far I let them go they just would not eat the bait. Finally after about three hours of steady action/non/action I got pi$$ed off, put my traps back on and started fishing two rods both in gear. Half a dozen rakes later one stuck, and it was a good one. Big head shakes right off, several good long runs, so after about fifteen minutes I knew he was a good fish. I also figured that it was probably barely hooked so I resisted tightening the drag and waited it out. I tell you there were several times I was tempted to tighten up when he was slowly slipping off drag. Finally it came up still swimming not hanging. A very clean bright fish no mud..."
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That's a classic trap hook scenario. That fish was pushing thirty and out of twenty or more raked baits it was the only halibut I caught. What I did not say is I think that fish hit three times before I hooked her because I got raked hard twice in exactly the same spot before she hung. I just kept working it till I stuck her.
Afterwords I told a few friends about that bite and there were only three fish caught in the next few days there that I heard about but they were all over 19 pounds. Everyone said the same thing: tons of raked baits. So don't try to tell me big fish don't rake and drop baits it's utter BS.
It's all simple mechanics. Halibut are ambush feeders, they come up off the bottom and usually grab the bait sideways with the baits head outside their mouth, then lie back down on the sand, turn the bait and swallow it head first. Every once in a while a big fish with just engulf the bait whole but that is not the norm. When your letting them run your really waiting for them to lie back down on the sand. If they hold on to it long enough to turn the bait you can get them with a single hook, but if the do not hold on long enough or don't turn the bait you can not hook them with a nose hooked bait.
Often halibut are in a kind of finicky mood where they grab the bait and almost instantly spit it back out, it's almost impossible to get those fish with a single hook.
Know what an assist hook is? Like one of these:
OK I tie my trap hooks like assist hooks but with trebles and doubled twenty pound power pro green spectra. The hooks I use are small super sharp stainless trebles. I hook the bait behind the anal fin underneath it, and they last more then long enough to get bit that way. Twenty pound spectra is about as thin as fine thread, it offers almost no resistance to the swimming bait, and can hardly be seen against the bait by the halibut I'm targeting. It can't get cut by thier teeth and it's almost impossible for them to break with the drag I use.
When I fish traps 90% of the time I keep the reel in gear with a light drag. I'm not waiting for them to turn and swallow the bait, I'm trying to hook them right when they first grab it sideways, before they even have a chance to spit it. All I need is one of those thread like double strands of spectra to catch on one of their teeth. What happens is if they catch a strand of spectra and then pull away, they then pull that treble right into the side of their mouth and they are hooked even if it was never in their mouth.
I'm not saying it's an ideal hookeset, and it's not as strong as hooking them with a big single inside the mouth. In order for it to work you have to run a light drag, and be easy on the fish but it definitely works. Their teeth can not cut spectra so you don't have bite offs, and the pulled hook ratio is not bad if you fish light enough gear. I use maybe six to eight feet of 15lbs fluorocarbon with twenty pound spectra mainline, and I fish it with a very light drag. With the spectra's lack of stretch and the small sharp trebles you hook a lot of fish without having to wait for them to swallow the bait.
I've caught a lot of halibut, I've also got some good friends that fish halibut almost exclusively: guys like Robert (Locals Only) that have had IGFA records for halibut. I would say that half of my halibut over ten pounds have been caught with trap rigged baits, and I'd also say from my experience fishing with guys that are in general much better halibut fisherman then I am, that there are days when you simply can't catch them without running trap hooks.
Just saying...
It's not either or... I'd say a smart angler has many tools in the toolbox.
