Offshore Alaska

A Florida fly fisherman tries his hand at deep-jigging for monster halibut and rockfish off Middleton Island in the Gulf of Alaska

By Pat Ford

November 13, 2023

I spend roughly a month in Alaska each summer, usually chasing rainbow trout and salmon in the creeks and rivers. All told, I’ve spent nearly three years of my life fishing in Alaska. On a few occasions, I’ve gone offshore to fish, and it’s quite a bit different from my home waters in Florida.

My first offshore trip on the Bering Sea was out of Hoodoo Lodge’s outcamp in 2013. I was with my friend Tony Weaver, and we didn’t know what to expect. We fished in shallow water (less than 60 feet) on a small aluminum boat they had stored next to a shack and caught a strange collection of bottom-dwellers I’d never seen before. We also caught halibut, rockfish and lingcod, but nothing of any size. We fly-fished and caught a few small halibut and rockfish on lead-eye flies and 800-grain sinking lines. I really didn’t appreciate how difficult that was until years later. It was a fun adventure, but quickly forgotten when we got back to chasing salmon.

A few years after that first foray offshore, I found myself with Weaver and Capt. Andy Mezirow, a well-respected guide who fishes out of Seward, Alaska. Weaver was filming an episode of a television show and invited me to come along and do some light-tackle deep-jigging. Halibut, especially the really big fish, live in deep water with a ton of current. Anglers fish large jigs and heavy sinkers that weigh up to 2 pounds on 100-pound braid to find bottom, but we weren’t going to be doing any of that. Mezirow took us to some “shallow” areas that were stacked with rockfish, lingcod and a few halibut. I’d never seen a yellow-eye rockfish and was duly impressed with their fluorescent-orange colors, which radiated through the water as the fish came up. We caught some large, toothy lingcod on knife jigs, which I found a lot more fun than using mega-sized halibut jigs with giant rubber tails. It was another interesting adventure into an area I rarely experience, but my main focus remained on Alaska’s streams and rivers.

I’ve been going to Rainbow King Lodge — 190 miles southwest of Anchorage on Lake Iliamna, Alaska’s largest lake — almost every year since 1993, primarily for its spectacular rainbow trout and salmon action. The lodge maintains several boats in a cove on Shelikof Strait and uses them for offshore fishing. I knew about the offshore trips, but I stuck to the streams. Lodge owner Rodger Glaspey brought up the subject of the halibut fishing, saying it’s best in July and August but not so great in September, when I typically arrived. Several weeks before I showed up, they caught a halibut that weighed 238 pounds. Glaspey pointed out that the cove where the lodge keeps the boats is the same place “Grizzly Man” Timothy Treadwell spent summers playing with bears and where he was mauled to death.

Glaspey knows this area well. He has been fishing out of Rainbow King since the 1980s, long before he bought it, and like me, he had never ventured to the offshore fishery, which the guides refer to as “Calypso.” They nickname their spots to keep outsiders in the dark. After purchasing the lodge, Glaspey decided he should experience and evaluate all of the fishing spots, including those in the deep water. The trip did not disappoint. They saw bald eagles, puffins, sea lions and whales, and caught halibut of all sizes and other monstrous fish generally labeled rockfish. Naturally, I wanted to try bottom fishing on my next visit.

I’ve been deep-jigging Florida reefs and wrecks for some 50 years, and I’ve perfected my technique and tackle to the point where it’s both effective and fun. We use stiff, light rods, smallish reels with 20- to 40-pound braid, and various flutter and knife jigs that usually weigh less than 6 ounces. I brought such an outfit to Rainbow King and was promptly told I wouldn’t be able to land a halibut on that “flimsy rig.” The guides told me they use stout rods and big reels spooled with 130-pound braid, and fish 24-ounce jigs. I asked about the average size of their halibut catches and was told around 35 pounds. I figured my Florida gear would be up to the task unless I hooked a 200-pounder — I’d cross that bridge when I came to it.

As it turned out, my jigging setup worked just fine. I caught more halibut up to 50 pounds that day than all of the other guys combined, and I wasn’t exhausted from lugging around a huge rod and pumping giant hunks of metal all day. I left my rod and reel with the lodge manager and was not surprised to hear they converted all of their offshore tackle to similar rigs the following season.

While the first trip was nothing short of inspiring — an idyllic ocean setting with a wide range of bottom fish I’d never experienced — I dreamed of landing a truly large halibut. Until last summer, my biggest was about 50 pounds. To make matters more difficult, I wanted to catch a big one on fly.

Back in the ’80s, my friends Paul Leader and Capt. Bouncer Smith set almost every IGFA fly-fishing halibut record out of Kodiak, Alaska, several of which weighed more than 100 pounds. I knew it could be done and kicked the idea around with Weaver, who had caught a fair number of halibut on fly. In July 2022, he set up a trip with our guide buddy Dave Wilson on Paul Cahill’s Northern Exposure for a trip to Middleton Island.

Rarely fished, Middleton is 150 miles from Whittier. The weather must be perfect to attempt this trip, and you have to overnight on the boat. Not many people have fished Middleton, and I jumped at the chance. Weaver and I brought billfish-weight fly rods hoping we would get a chance to hook a monster halibut. We also brought our Florida-style jigging rods and a collection of knife jigs.

We left Whittier around 5 p.m. July 5 and ran 75 miles to the tip of Montague Island, where we spent the night at anchor after emptying Cahill’s shrimp traps. Alaskan shrimp are about the size of a spiny lobster that’s just short of the 3-inch carapace minimum. The next morning, we ran another 75 miles before we started fishing. This was no doubt a meat-fishing trip; those on board were after halibut, lingcod and rockfish, with king salmon also a possibility. We bottom-fished in depths ranging from 80 to 300 feet.

If I had used the lighter jigs that we fish in Florida, all I would have caught were rockfish and small lingcod. Wilson explained that if I wanted to land big fish, I needed big food so the smaller fish would ignore it. Big food in Alaska means a 16-ounce jig with a giant grub tail and a chunk of salmon on the hook. I wanted to stick with my lighter rod, so I opted for an 8-ounce jig of similar size to the monster jigs, but not as cumbersome. Sure enough, the rockfish ignored it, and I wound up with a 140-pound halibut.

Cahill’s boat is an aluminum catamaran built by Bay Weld Boats out of Homer, measuring 50 feet with an 18-foot beam. It’s powered by four 425-hp Yamaha outboards. The rails were lined with rod holders, and there was a small fishing platform between the engines — not exactly a cockpit set up for fly-fishing. We discussed launching the dinghy if we found a concentration of halibut in shallow water, but that never happened. Nevertheless, the jigging action was nonstop.

We had solid fishing for two days until a front arrived and drove us back to the dock a day early. Weather is always a real risk in Alaska. Conditions can quickly change from fair to dangerous, especially in a smaller boat far from a safe harbor. Northern Exposure can handle most conditions safely, but there is the comfort level of everyone on board to consider.

We stopped to empty Cahill’s shrimp traps again on the return trip. Those prawns were exquisite, as were the fillets in Northern Exposure’s hold. It cost me $200 in extra baggage fees to bring home 50 pounds of fish, but it was well worth it. I enjoy filling the freezer with fish I’ve caught, but that feeling hardly compares to the fun I had deep-jigging the plentiful waters surrounding Middleton Island. When you’re from Florida, fishing the big waters of Alaska is always a good time.