Halibut Help San Diego/Mission Bay

[FishNinjaY]

Originally Posted by steveooo

I think a bigger factor for catching halibut is where you are are fishing, rather than what rig you are fishing with.

Halibut move more than people give them credit for. Try different depths. I've caught them from about 100ft deep, as shallow as 5 feet. As mentioned previously, they are ambush predators. Bait fish like the structure, halibut like the sandy flat bottom, but they need to eat the bait fish. Concentrate on fishing the sandy bottom areas near structure. These will be the areas that the halibut will wait to ambush the stray baitfish that strays too far away from the structure. When halibut fishing, I always try to locate structure fist, then find the flat bottom nearby.

this makes some good sense.. good tips on this thread!

Yesterday at DP, I caught a pretty big lizardfish (my skunkbuster).. I should have pinned that on and tossed it out there! Same area, my son caught a decent halibut on a dropper loop anchovy, pretty close to the rocky shore. Last year, he caught his biggest halibut (about 19") on a 3" swimbait, only about 10 yards off shore in LB.

Here's a pic of some halibut rigs.. not my pic, but maybe useful..