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FISHING
BASS • STEELHEAD • STRIPERS • TROUT • SALTWATER
HUNTING
THE KRAKEN
SAN DIEGO-BASED BOATS BEGIN PATROL FOR HUMBOLDT SQUID
SAN DIEGO–The Humboldt squid
has a well-deserved reputation as an
apex-level badass, with a voracious
appetite and an ever-expanding range
that frightens the bejeebers out of
many West Coast fish managers.
The hunter, though, becomes the
hunted this month as Seaforth
Landing
in
San
Diego
(www.seaforthlanding.com; 619224-3383) cranks up its “giant
squid” half-day charter schedule.
“We start sending out some exploratory trips after Christmas,” says
John Rowe at the Seaforth tackle shop
(619-224-5447). “They’ll run maybe
8, 9, 10 miles from the harbor. The last
two to three years, our captains have
been able to find them pretty consistantly based on several conditions that
they won’t even tell us about, but
(Humboldts) are definitely honing
in on some sort of feed or current
condition. We had them
around pretty good in January and February last year,
so, hopefully that’ll happen again this year.
The
Humboldt
squid fishery has
evolved over the past three decades
from a summertime incidental catch to
a January-through-March half-day
option that sometimes sees 40 to 50
anglers on board the New Seaforth and
It takes a beastly bait to subdue a critter
that thrives in 1,000-foot depths. Specialty
squid jigs like the 20-inch Ahi USA Giant
Squid Jig (pictures) and Izor Jumbo Squid
Jig are standard baits aboard the squid
charter boats. (PHOTO COURTESY AHI USA)
60 California Sportsman January 2010
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FISHING
NORTHERN EXPOSURE:
HUMBOLDTS OUT OF
SAN FRANCISCO
The arrival of giant squid off the
coast of San Diego is no surprise to
Capt. Tom Mattusch of Huli Cat
Sportfishing in San Francisco
(www.hulicat.com), who has been
targeting the big diablos rojos for five
years in Pioneer Canyon and off The
Fingers in Davenport.
“When they leave here, they migrate down to Baja,” says Mattusch,
who has participated in Humboldt
filming expeditions for both Discovery Channel and National Geographic,
and assisted in squid research with
NOAA and the National Marine Fisheries Service. “People will say that
they’re here or there all year long,
but there are just certain times you
won’t get them, no matter where
you’re fishing.”
Early January is usually a productive squid-hunting month for Mattusch, who typically fishes waters
between 1,100 and 1,500 feet deep.
“When we first started fishing
them, they left around the third week
of March, and then the next year at
the beginning of March,” he says.
“Last week it was the second week of
January, so it’s never been the same
from year to year.”
Mattusch’s fishing grounds have
changed over that five-year period
from the dependable depths of Pioneer Canyon – where charters would
typically find Humboldts in 100 to
200 fathoms on the edge of canyon
dropoffs – to a wider, less predictable
range and bottom strata.
“It was textbook for awhile, but
something has changed,” Mattusch
says. “We’re not catching them as
much in those same places, and the
bottom is flatter now where we’ve
found them.”
Mattusch uses similar gear as the
San Diego squid charters: big Ahi
squid jigs on 40- to 50-pound spectra, spooled on two-speed reels and
5 ½-foot Seeker rods. –JS
62 California Sportsman January 2010
BASS • STEELHEAD • STRIPERS • TROUT • SALTWATER
Dolphin, the two boats from Seaforth
that focus hard on squid. However, as
longtime landing manager John Yamate points out: “There IS no ‘typical’
where these things are concerned.”
“The last three or four rounds
they’ve shown up big in the winter
time, and always the bigger squid,” Yamate says. “They’re a little bit unpredictable, but once we find them and
they start biting, it can get pretty busy.”
Squid 101: Humboldt squid are capable of surviving in depths of over 2,000
feet, and they move in massive shoals
that, according to some researchers,
average between 500 and 700 feet
deep off the San Diego coast. Last summer’s rash of shallow-water Humboldt
encounters by local divers is an anomaly, so the basic challenge on a squid
charter (after locating them, of course),
is getting them to leave the benthic
depths to pursue a jig.
“We kinda have to do a dance with
them,” Rowe says. “We’ll go out there
at night, with the deck lights and some
supplemental lights running off the
New Seaforth and Dolphin, and try to
get them to come up out of that
1,000-foot water. We’ll typically send
a couple (jigs) down to see if we can
Capt. Tom Mattusch of Huli Cat
Charters says that Humboldt
squid migrate out of northern
California waters in the
winter en route to Baja. (PHOTO
COURTESY HULI CAT SPORTFISHING,
WWW.HULICAT.COM)
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FISHING
BASS • STEELHEAD • STRIPERS • TROUT • SALTWATER
bring them up, but if the game happens and we can get them up between
400 feet and the surface, the water basically explodes with squid.”
Humboldt gear: Squid-jigging newbies show up every year with standard
jigs loaded with treble hooks, but, as
Rowe points out, the squid jiggery is a
“no-treble zone.” Standard gear is a
20-inch, 24-ounce Ahi USA SJ-1000
Giant/Humboldt Squid Jig or an 8inch Izor Jumbo Squid Jig that can be
weighted with up to 24 ounces of lead
via a long-range scissor snap.
“The smaller, weighted squid jigs
will work, but the metal tines on the
‘umbrellas’ on those jigs will pull out
on bigger animals,” Rowe advises.
“The Promar SJ-1000 works really
well, and with the Izor commercial
squid jigs, you can use a variableweight system by clipping on 8-, 12-,
14-, 16- and 20-ounce weights. We’ve
seen guys clip 24-ounce torpedoes
64 California Sportsman January 2010
onto those. That particular jig allows
you to pop a clip and switch the
weight according to the current.”
Because of the extreme depths and
weight of the jigs, Rowe recommends
80-pound Spectra spooled on a 4/0
size lever-drag reel.
“There’s just too much stretch fishing that deep with mono,” he says. “A
1- or 2-ounce jig on 80-pound Spectra
gets down there like a missle, and you
don’t have to worry about your line
bowing. Plus, that size line isn’t so small
that people can’t work with it.” –JS
THE REWARDS
Humboldts will range from 20 to 40 pounds, with the occasional 60-pound behemoth
making for a cooler full of calamari. Their flesh is similar in flavor to smaller squid, but
they require a little extra attention to cleaning and preparation.
After cutting the wings off (save for bait), slice the mantle from just above the eye
to the top, lay it open and cut the membrane that attaches the innards to the mantle,
(being very careful not to puncture the innards). There’s a cartilage structure that runs
the length of the mantle, from top to bottom – slice two rectangular fillets off of the
mantle, making one cut on either side of the cartilage.
Peel the brown membrane/skin off both sides of the fillets and clean them
THOROUGHLY.
“You have to be sure to peel both the inner and outer skin off and really rinse the
fillets well,” Rowe confirms. “Sometimes you’ll hear of one of these things having an
ammonia or metallic taste, but we’ve researched it pretty well and found out that it’s
water-soluble. You don’t need to soak it in milk or anything. Just put the fillets in water
for awhile and it’ll make all the difference in the world.” –JS