Halibut Fishing
It doesn’t get any better than BC halibut fishing. Port Renfrew is home to some of the world’s largest & hardest hitting halibut. Get ready for a battle to remember!
Halibut are a migratory fish, traveling great distances each spring to come into shallower waters to feed and spawn. Port Renfrew is surrounded by famous halibut feeding grounds. The experienced guides at Wild Coast Wilderness Resort have discovered hundreds of the best halibut fishing spots over the past 20 years along the west coast of Vancouver Island and the legendary Swiftsure Bank. These are some of the most productive halibut grounds in Canada!
On BC’s West Coast we frequently target “Chicken Halibut” which are really tasty fish that typically range from 20 to 50lbs. Larger halibut are often found lying on lesser populated humps in nearby waters, throughout our season we occasionally see 100lb halibut with the current Port Renfrew record weighing in at a mammoth 240 pounds!
Big “Barn Door Halibut” are also common in our area, while we do catch these large “buttes,” since these fish are all mature females that have made it to the breeding stage, we do not go out of our way to specifically target them (it’s a bit like killing the goose that lays the golden eggs.)
Your BC Halibut Fishing Experience
Depending on the conditions and the tides, your guide may decide that we should fish for halibut first or do so after we’ve reeled in a few trophy salmon. If it’s “Hali time,” we’re headed to the world-renowned halibut fishing paradise – the Swiftsure Banks! Once we get there, we’re fishing Vancouver Island halibut with sturdy rods and level wind reels spooled with 100 lb test thin braided line.
On our pilot house boats, each man takes a corner and drops the gear. Bombs away! You are sport fishing BC halibut – West Coast Vancouver Island style
For you first timers, it’s a fight! These fish are tough, true denizens of the deep and top of the food chain. They hit hard and fight like champions. There is no finesse here, halibut have one thing in mind, and one thing only – try to get back to the bottom – and you are going to have to work hard to bring them up.
While halibut can grow to hundreds of pounds and most first-time halibut sport fishermen are hoping to land a giant fish, after battling with a 40 pounder, most say that was plenty enough fight for them!