lpaulcarter
Member
My wife and I want to learn how to fish for halibut (mostly in the Sidney area where our boat is most of the time) and I had heard these charts have GPS waypoints for good places to start. Yesterday I picked up a copy of the San Juan Islands/South Gulf Islands/Strait of Juan de Fuca Fish-n-Map, and I've been going over it this morning, comparing their suggested locations for salmon, lingcod and rockfish with areas I'm already familiar with. They're good, but seldom mention halibut. There are, however, a lot of waypoints with a name, but no other specific information attached. Quite a few of them are in areas where I've heard of people catching halibut, and most of them look pretty fishy. There's no real explanation elsewhere on the chart for these waypoints, so I'm assuming that's why they're there.
Some are a little odd: one, called D'Arcy Shoals (a name I've heard used a lot in Sidney in connection with halibut) is located at the south end of James Island, in about 14 feet of water, almost 1 nautical mile WNW of the actual D'Arcy Shoals...14 feet seems a little shallow for halibut. Another waypoint, shown as being just off the eastern tip of Rum Island, has coordinates which put it out in Haro Strait, in about 1600 feet of water...if there's halibut 'way down there, I'm sure not going after them!!
Some of the waypoints I checked are off enough to cause some serious grief if someone were to ignore the publisher's disclaimer that they aren't responsible for any bad things that happen to people using the chart as a navigational aid (it happens - last year I talked to a couple of guys in Port Renfrew who were heading out to the Bank, and the only chart they had was a Fish-n-Map).
Anyway, has anyone else used these charts to find halibut? It sounds like salmon fishing might be seriously curtailed around here if fisheries goes ahead with plans to protect the Cowichan run, so we figure we'd better start learning how to find and catch something else...
Paul
Some are a little odd: one, called D'Arcy Shoals (a name I've heard used a lot in Sidney in connection with halibut) is located at the south end of James Island, in about 14 feet of water, almost 1 nautical mile WNW of the actual D'Arcy Shoals...14 feet seems a little shallow for halibut. Another waypoint, shown as being just off the eastern tip of Rum Island, has coordinates which put it out in Haro Strait, in about 1600 feet of water...if there's halibut 'way down there, I'm sure not going after them!!
Some of the waypoints I checked are off enough to cause some serious grief if someone were to ignore the publisher's disclaimer that they aren't responsible for any bad things that happen to people using the chart as a navigational aid (it happens - last year I talked to a couple of guys in Port Renfrew who were heading out to the Bank, and the only chart they had was a Fish-n-Map).
Anyway, has anyone else used these charts to find halibut? It sounds like salmon fishing might be seriously curtailed around here if fisheries goes ahead with plans to protect the Cowichan run, so we figure we'd better start learning how to find and catch something else...
Paul
