Fishing Lures | Kodiak Custom Fishing Lures

It was a drizzly evening in Izhut Bay on Afognak Island Alaska.  After working eight hours at my day job in a local salmon hatchery, I was eager to start the night shift at my second job as owner, lure designer and video producer of Kodiak Custom Fishing Tackle.  My latest project was putting the finishing touches on (what will soon be) the best bottom fishing jig this world has to offer and capturing its results on film.    

These jigs were originally designed for targeting halibut and lingcod in the Prince William Sound and Kodiak Alaska areas.  They proved to be lethal in both locations but there was still something missing.  I wanted a lure that would catch all bottom fish species (halibut, lingcod, all rockfish, skate etc.) on the Pacific Coast.  My number one policy when designing fishing lures is to ensure that all of the gear I manufacture will not only catch a lot of fish, but also hold up to the punishment of hard fishing and salt water corrosion before I put it on the open market.

((What my buddy Nick Bower and I were doing on that gloomy night on Afognak Island was field testing my “prototype” Bottom Fishing Jig.  We fished out of a home-made twenty-foot aluminum skiff in about 100 feet of water.  Nick was my one-man video crew prepared to catch all the action on film once we hooked into a fish.  Video cameras and rain don’t mix, but when you’re a fishing junkie that’s looking for action, sometimes you have to take the gamble.))

The weather was bad but I had a feeling that fishing would be good.  Nick and I knew that several nice halibut were caught out of the honey hole (I call it halibut hill) in Izhut Bay over the weekend.  These fish were the first good shot of halibut to show up in the bay this year.  You never know how long they will stay before moving on, so it’s important to go after them while the fishing is good.

My line wasn’t down for 10 minutes when the nibbling started.  “Roll the camera!  I’m getting a bite!”  I said to Nick.  Then I counted to three and wham, fish on!  It felt like I hooked into a Volkswagen Bug down there!  It didn’t matter how much torque that I put on the rod, I still couldn’t budge this guy.  There was a point where I wondered if I actually had a fish on at all?  Maybe I was snagged up on a lost anchor line or some bull kelp that was swaying in the current mimicking fish movement.  Fifteen minutes into this fight and getting no where, I handed the rod over to Nick to get a second opinion.  We took turns trying to pull the monster up from the ocean floor and after forty minutes, we still hadn’t gained an inch.  Finally I realized that it was time to really test our luck and the durability of my gear.  I tightened the drag on my Penn reel while praying that my rod, named “The Lever”, built by a good friend Rich Overbeck, would hold up under our new strategy.  Nick started up the skiff then put it in gear to try and slowly pull this fish up.  Surprisingly, this plan of attack was working.  Within five nerve-wracking minutes, a halibut emerged from the deep.  It looked like a small whale next to our skiff.  There was no way that Nick and I were going to haul this guy in.  Even if we could have, it would have ripped our puny skiff to pieces and made halibut bait out of both of us!  We harpooned the fish and towed it one and a half miles to the dock.  Then our good buddy Drew Aro, showed up with a .44 magnum and shot it twice in the head before we pulled the 420 pound barn door out of the water using a hydraulic crane.

After giving each other high fives, vainly posing for photos, and downing a few cool tasty beverages, we sat next to our colossal catch and thought that we surely must have broken a record with this fish.  We soon found out that (at the time)  the current I.G.F.A. (International Game Fish Association) world record halibut was set at 413 pounds.  That was seven pounds lighter than our “Moby Dick!”  But hold your applause.  Unfortunately, the methods that we used to safely land this fish without getting hurt, or even killed, were reasons which would disqualify us from getting into the record books.  That’s right.  Not only did we break the world record halibut while fishing out of an aluminum skiff, we broke nearly every rule in the book by taking turns holding the rod, pulling the fish to the surface with our skiff, harpooning it, towing it to the dock, shooting it with a .44 and pulling it out of the water with a hydraulic crane.  I guess we should have learned the rules of the game before we field tested the best bottom fish jig this world has to offer.  We did capture our battle with this huge halibut on film however, so we can still share this memory with the world.  But it will be through our video and not the record books… this time!

It took great equipment, team work, and of course, a Kodiak Custom Fishing Tackle Bottom Fishing Jig to land this monster 420 pound, 91.5-inch monster.  Oh, and did I forget to mention, it also took a little luck.

 

Tony Davis - Kodiak Custom Fishing Tackle