Halibut anchoring question

Just a thought here. Myself, Wolf, and lots of guys who do well for halibut don't use bait bags. The biggest problem I can see with them, is what the current does on the surface is often very different then what it does on the bottom. I can see in a lot of cases the line from your boat to your anchor sitting perpendicular to the currents near the sea bed. Several times, I have had it where the lines from the boat drift forward to the anchor as well, when the currents do not do what the book said they would.

If it was a perfect drift, then yes, maybe the chum bag would do it, however, I think you would wind up with lots of fish staring at your anchor having swam by your bait. Several times we have had a fish take the bait, spit the hook, and circle back to take it again. I think with a chum bag further upstream you may miss these hits.

Also, I don't think the scent would trail in a nice line from your chum bag on the anchor, I bet you would get a "wake" effect, with it spreading quite wide as it drifts back, so halibut could go cruising by 30-50 feet to either side of your bait.

However, if it puts fish in the box, keep doing it :)

I agree with you-hence the question-when I drew it all out to scale-looked how far you could be from a bait bag and also may even be well above any scent trail if the current was light and in opposition to the wind and swell-I just couldn't see how it would work" all the time". In fact it could quite have the opposite effect in certain circumstances. I like Derbys suggestion about the downrigger-then again I may just go back to salmon fishing!! LOL
 
Now who would do that to you, you low down and dirty Canuck poster boy :) Derby you r still my one and only buddy...Steve is looking for some blanks what you got shooter??
WHAT!!! only one friend...yes it has been awhile...:)
 
I may know someone who stuck a bait bag on a downrigger.. I hear that the hali grabbed it, and must have got it's teeth stuck (It was an onion bag), and broke the belt on the rigger :)

We have tried Bait Bags and frankly they are not worth the bother!
 
i have had my bait bag chewed on a few times.. pretty funny when the rigger gets bouncing, they get no meal then the rod goes off!!
 
i have had my bait bag chewed on a few times.. pretty funny when the rigger gets bouncing, they get no meal then the rod goes off!!
4 years ago Off Cape Scott was the only time I have ever used a bait bag-put down an onion bag or similar material crammed with guts 'eggs and frames on the rigger. We were drifting in 240 ft of water-started to get some nice hali's to 50 lbs. Thought this was the way to go-all of a sudden the rigger started bouncing HARD!! Thinking it might be on bottom I brought it up 20 ft-read the counter and it was a good 30 ft off the bottom. I was using cable at the time. The rigger is going nuts-I tried bringing it up a little more and while it would come -it was very slow-I was so nervous I put a rope on the rigger thinking it may pull out. Got it up another 20 ft-realized the boat was being towed- Every time we got the rigger moving up-shaking got more violent. While I'll admit it was exciting!! I wasn't sure how it was going to end-finally the cable broke. That is the last time I ever used a bait bag!!! Building Derbys PVC bait holder now-memories have faded and figure it can't happen twice. Watch this space!!LOL
 
bait bag on the rigger all the way , id think that pipe would not juice enough ,
sure looks nice though , just pick up a mesh bag for crabbing,comes with a built in
draw string slider gadget lock as well ,fill with cut up scraps
, i do this at home and freeze it
place in bag frozen ...
soak it with x10 or butt juice send er down ,
believe pnt sells them , definately at army and navy
just make sure ur bait is cut slightly larger than the mesh holes is important !!!
my last outting , i had 2 hali follow the bag up after we whacked our 2 fish in short order
as Blair said , they will bounce the rigger at times ,gets the blood flowin .... but always let go...

m2b

fd
 
Has anyone tried the small plastic scent chambers attached (zap straps?) to the spreader bar? I have a couple of them but have not tried them yet. They are thin walled plastic tubes (like a pill bottle) with small holes in them and an end cap. Inside is either open cell foam or polyester like batting, basically water resistant cotton balls. You fill them up with herring oil and the small holes and holding material time the release of the herring oil scent. The advantage I can see for these is that they will send a scent trail out from the immediate area of the hook but on the down side could also add a little bit of drag in a stronger current helping to push your gear off the bottom. They are not that large though, so perhaps the float and drag factor are not significant concerns.
 
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Has anyone tried the small plastic scent chambers attached (zap straps?) to the spreader bar? I have a couple of them but have not tried them yet. They are thin walled plastic tubes (like a pill bottle) with small holes in them and an end cap. Inside is either open cell foam or polyester like batting, basically water resistant cotton balls. You fill them up with herring oil and the small holes and holding material time the release of the herring oil scent. The advantage I can see for these is that they will send a scent trail out from the immediate area of the hook but on the down side could also add a little bit of drag in a stronger current helping to push your gear off the bottom.

yep...used them...when we bothered with them, we put a cotton swab in to absorb some of the scent cause if you put just the scent liquid in it is gone pretty quickly. Can't say we felt it improved our production...to us it's all about when the bite comes on.
 
If you want to use the oil scent chambers then get the bilge or garage floor cloth which only soaks up oil not water. Then your scent sticks and stays-good also in bait bags when you put in butt juice or whatever-crush salmon roe is good too!!
 
I use same system as Felix posted. Simple and it works. You can make your own real cheap by using some fine mesh net they use for salmon farming net pens. Hang it off the rigger and in 30 minutes you have a nice sent trail and fish snooping around
 
Coming from the man who did a lot for Halibut population control. I think that's a great point

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