Adventure - Fishing with Dan Donich Charter – Full-Day Halibut Trip

Chris' 35 lb halibut ready to break the surface.

Stats

Difficulty: Easy - Moderate                                                                      Time:  Full-Day

Summary

I love halibut, but we don’t own a boat.   We decided to go on a fishing charter on 11 Sep on the hope of filling the freezer.  This time we chose Dan Donich (Daniel's Personalized Guide Service).  He was recommended by an acquaintance.  This was our second charter in 2013.  We went out on the Irish in late Aug (see Halibut Fishing with North Country Charters) and came home with 15.8 lbs of halibut filets, but we wanted more.

Opinion

Great trip!  My husband and I caught our limit (so did everyone else on the boat) and came home with 54.1 lbs of halibut filets
.  My freezer is very happy and I’m happier.  Dan runs his charter year round, so we’re giving serious thought to fishing for Winter King salmon with him.

Trail Advice

Dress in layers and bring a jacket.  Temperatures on the ocean can vary from warm to downright cold.

Bring lunch, water, and coffee or tea, but don’t over pack.  There isn’t a lot of space in his seating area.

Bring your fishing license and Halibut Derby ticket.  The boat won’t leave harbor without your license.

Bring a camera.  You never know what you might see.

If you are prone to motion sickness take Dramamine or use a Scopolamine patch.  When fishing, the boat rocks with the waves and it is easy to get sick.

Suitability

Dan is capable of meeting the needs of most passengers.  If you have a special needs requirement, contact him to see if you can be accommodated.

Dan's Boat, the Optimist

Starting Point

Dan’s boat, the Optimist, is docked near the Coal Point fisher on the Homer Spit.  Ask for directions.  It’s easy to find.

The Adventure

Before I get into the trip, I want to recommend that if you are fishing for halibut in Homer during the season (May – Sep) you should get a Halibut Derby ticket.  The tickets are each worth a different prize.  One of the best prizes is a Ford F150.  Someone actually won that one this year!  It turns out someone else caught the $50,000 tag, but they didn’t have a Derby ticket so no prize.  The tickets are only good for one day.  You will have to buy another for your next halibut fishing day, but they were only $10 a piece.  You can get more information on the Homer Chamber of Commerce site (Homer Chamber of Commerce). 

On 11 Sep, we showed up at the boat, as directed, at 0700.  The sun was just rising.  Unfortunately, that day the weather guessers were wrong.  The winds were supposed to 10 mph with 2 ft seas and it turned out to be 25 mph with 6 ft seas.  The Captain, Dan Donich, checked with all of his prospective passengers to see if we could come again on a different day.  Everyone could, so the Captain called it and we tried again Thursday, 12 Sep.  I was great that he was willing and able to be flexible to the weather (that may not have been as easy in the summer).

Sunrise off the Homer Spit

On Thursday, same bat-time, same bat-channel, the bay looked much calmer.  We headed out of the harbor into a beautiful sunrise.  On out way out, we got the standard safety briefing.  There were a few differences.  Dan keeps a batch of exposure suits on board for his passengers.  As he put it “I just couldn’t see giving my passengers a life vest while I pulled on an exposure suit.”  The water in the bay is too cold for anyone to survive more than 3 or 4 minutes without a suit.

Fishing for bait

Shortly after we entered the bay and before we started out to the fishing grounds, Dan stopped, handed us rods with lures and had us fish for Pollock.  We tossed the lures overboard and let out line until we hit bottom the reeled up about 3 ft.  We bounced the lure and couple of times and POW a Pollock.  The lure was rarely in the water for a full minute before we caught a fish.  The Pollock were to be part of our bait for the Halibut.

Beautiful morning for
fishing

After we caught enough Pollock, Dan headed out to fish.  It turns out that once we were around the Spit, it wasn’t quite as good as it looked, but it wasn’t too bad.  There was a 3-4 foot surge and it was a bit windy (about 15 mph), but it was very doable.

Bigger fish

Big fish

After a rather bouncy ride we reached Dan’s favorite fishing ground (at least for that part of the season).  We set up in waters about 80 feet deep.  Dan likes a combination of octopus or squid with the Herring or Pollock.  The fishing was slow, but Chris and I did well.  I caught the first fish (with a bit of help from Dan) and after reeling it in, found it was a good 20-25 lbs.  This is, so we are told, the best size to catch.  Much bigger than about 50 lbs and the meat isn’t so tender; plus it can be hard to pull in a bigger fish.  The fish seem to weigh about double their true weight when you reel them in.  Chris caught the next two: a 35+ and a 30+.  We were doing great!

Halibut breaking the surface

Then the fishing dried up and we didn’t even get a nibble.  At that point Dan decided to try drift fishing.  We upped anchor and he let the boat drift for a few minutes.  We’d fish until he said we’d drifted far enough.  Then we’d reel in, he’d move the boat back up current, and we start again.  One of the two other passengers, Ted, caught the next, which was about 20 lb.  While we fished we chatted with the other passengers.  That’s when I realized our other passenger’s name was Bill.  Which meant, of course, that Chris and I were on “Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure.”

Okay, enough bad jokes.  Drift fishing was still slow.  We listened to the other charters calling on the radio to see if anyone had found good fishing.  In addition, Dan got at least 3 phone calls from other captains looking for halibut.  When we started to reach the end of the day and we were still four fish short of our limit, Dan got on the radio and asked if anyone else was having any luck.  The Irish (discussed in an earlier blog: Daniel's Personalized Guide Service) was on the fish, although theirs were very small--what they call “chickens” in Homer.  They suggested we come drift using their boat as the starting point.  The fish were thick enough for us to anchor next to them, but drifting would let the Irish’s passengers continue to catch fish and maybe let us catch some too.

Bringing in a 35 lb halibut

15 lb halibut on deck

We headed toward the Irish’s location.  Much to our surprise and pleasure we got a quick glimpse of whales, probably Humpbacks, in the distance.  We headed that way, but they dived and showed no sign of surfacing any time soon.  So we were off to the Irish.  There the fishing was much better, but as expected the fish were much smaller.  We caught our remaining four within 30 minutes.  My second fish was the largest, though, at maybe 15 lbs.  The other 3 caught were 10-12 lbs.  As a side note, the halibut are really rather pretty when they first hit the deck.  Halibut can change color and pattern on their top surface to match the ground they are on.  This makes them hard for predators to see.  It makes for a very pretty appearance when they are first brought in.

If you read Dan’s web site, he says that you catch bigger fish in shallower water, but that there aren’t usually as many fish and fishing can be slow.  Smaller fish are more aggressive and hungry and are best caught around 200 ft.  Also, the bigger fish are usually farther from Homer, so only the full-day trips will go that far out.

The day's take

It was late when we caught our limit so we headed straight back in.  The seas were still rolling with surge and waves, so it was a bumpy ride.  We saw lots of sea otters as they dodged the boat and we had a seagull escort for most of the way until they saw they weren’t going to get any handouts.

Dan fileted our fish at the dock.  We took ours to Coal Point to be frozen in 1 lb pieces--the perfect size for two people.  We brought in 54.1 lbs of halibut.  Chris’ estimate is that we paid about ½ market price for the take.  Sadly, we didn’t catch any tagged fish, but I’m completely happy with 54 lbs of halibut!

As a quick comment this link has a great video of the halibut in Kachemak Bay: Halibut Video.