Chasing Halibut from Homer to the Bay

Right after college, I moved to Homer, Alaska, planning to earn money in a cannery so I could travel the world. The cannery wasn’t hiring, but over the years I found my way onto boats—eventually crewing on an all-female salmon seiner and later monitoring fish for the Alaska Department of Fish and Game. One of my first jobs, though, was filling in as a deckhand on a halibut charter.

At the interview, I was asked one question: “Do you get seasick?” I had $20 to my name, so I said no. As a previously landlocked Midwesterner, I had no idea.

In Homer, charter clients were nicknamed “pukers.” The boats ran far offshore, dropping bait along underwater ledges where halibut lay in wait, their flat, diamond-shaped mottled brown bodies camouflaged against the bottom of the sea, their eyes peering out from the muck to hunt. As the swells rolled, many clients got sick. I fixed my eyes on the horizon and willed my body to hold steady.

Our job was to bait the hooks for clients and, when they tired, we helped reel their fish up from the deep. Halibut rose slowly on the hook, almost serene—until they hit air, then thrashed with sudden violence. Hauling one aboard took all of us, and sometimes the line snapped and the fish disappeared back into the deep.

On the return to harbor, we filleted the catch—the bottom sides of halibut are white to blend with sun breaking through the water, so they can’t be detected from below. The lines along their bellies are almost a guide to filleting them: a slice down the center line would result in two large fillets on each side of the fish, and for the bigger fish, we’d cut out the tender cheeks.

Gulls shrieked and dove in our wake, and inside the fish we found partially digested crabs, octopus, and smaller fish—signs of their rapacious and varied appetites. Some days on the run back to harbor, orcas surfaced beside us or storm petrels stitched the sky, and that was enough to call it a great day.

Our crew share included a big halibut filet, and each night, I cooked it in butter with mushrooms and onions over a fire, finishing with a splash of soy. I shared with my neighbors, also young, broke, living in tents along the Homer Spit—trading crab, clams, salmon and beer, and marveling that we were eating like millionaires every night at the blustery edge of the world.

Now, living on Richardson Bay in Sausalito, I occasionally get a call from my neighbor, Court Mast, an avid fisherman, asking if I want a halibut. He’ll pull up in his Boston Whaler and hand one over. California halibut are smaller than their Alaskan cousins, the Pacific halibut—legal size is 22 inches and they can grow up to 72 inches long. By comparison, the Pacific halibut can grow up to nine feet long. Both are delicious.

“The trend in seafood now is sustainability,” Jay said. “And halibut spawn early and often, making them a sustainable species.”

I suspect one reason that Court offers them to me is that I know how to fillet a whole fish. It doesn’t intimidate me the way it does some neighbors. I cook halibut with more variation now, but I still rely on butter. Compared to oily fish like salmon or black cod, halibut is lean, so fat—butter and oil—keeps it moist. Its mild flavor makes it endlessly adaptable.

That versatility has made halibut a restaurant favorite. Sport boats like the one I worked on—and charter boats around in the San Francisco Bay—can’t sell their catch; only commercial boats are allowed to do that, and the most sustainable boats are small operations using hook and line. Still, it’s worth going out and catching your own. You get a front-row seat to sunrise over the bay, and if you ask Jay Yokomizo, captain of the New Huck Finn out of Emeryville, the journey is the best part.

Jay started working on boats out of Berkeley at age 10 in the mid-1970s. “My dad fished a lot,” he told me. “He got my brother Jon and me jobs to keep us busy—and apart because we got into too much trouble together.” Back then, boats ran two trips a day, making for 18- to 20-hour workdays targeting striped bass and halibut.

“Once I started working on boats,” Jay said, “all I wanted was my captain’s license, my own boat, and a business on the bay.” He’s done just that for 35 years. His brother Jon now runs the Sea Wolf out of the East Bay. They target different species, though Jay claims he’s the better fisherman.

Time on the water turns fishermen into citizen scientists. Jay has noticed that dry years often bring stronger halibut runs. “If you look at catches, the big years line up with drought,” he said. “Halibut spawn inside shallow, sandy flats around Berkeley, San Pablo Bay, and the South Bay, and drought means more mudflats and warmer, shallow water that they like.”

Salmon, by contrast, need heavy rainfall and cool water to sustain river flows for their eggs and fry. For halibut, the key is baitfish. Like other large fish, seabirds and marine mammals, they follow schools of anchovy, sardines, mackerel and herring. Herring runs have declined in recent years in the SF Bay, but anchovies have been abundant; the arrival of these smaller fish largely determine the season for the bigger ones, like halibut.

Halibut season in San Francisco Bay typically runs from April through August. As halibut grow, they move out to sea, then return in spring following the anchovies and other bait fish. Unlike salmon, halibut don’t spawn once and die. They begin spawning when they’re around 10 inches long. Because the legal catch size is 22 inches, most fish have spawned multiple times before they’re harvested.

By comparison, sturgeon don’t spawn until they are 15–30 years old and then they only spawn intermittently, every 2–11 years. “The trend in seafood now is sustainability,” Jay said. “And halibut spawn early and often, making them a sustainable species.”

Christian Cavanaugh owns and operates the vessel Outer Limits out of Sausalito through Big C Charters. Outer Limits is a catamaran, so Christian says that this is a very stable boat and good for people who suffer from seasickness. “It’s not an issue inside the bay,” he said. “But come July we fish the Marin and San Francisco coast along sandbars and so the catamaran is good for families or people who might be sensitive to motion.” So don’t worry, no nicknames here.

I no longer eat halibut every night, and it’s a treat when I do. This time of year I might use morel mushrooms, spring leeks and green garlic, maybe a seared peach. Sitting near the foggy bay eating halibut still makes me feel like I’m living like a millionaire. Or maybe now that’s more like a billionaire.

Find Jay at the New Huck Finn: newhuckfinn.com

Find Christian Cavanaugh at Big C Charters bigcscharters.com