Just went over to the bay (SD) on my lunch break to eat a sandwich and toss a few casts at my secret spot. Earlier this week a co-worker caught and released 4 short halibut and lost 1 big halibut as he attempted to drag it up on the beach (all in 30 minutes). All of his fish were on a krocodile spoon. Thought I'd give it a try except I used a small 3" megabait. On about the 2nd or third cast I caught a large smelt. A few casts later I got hammered. I was using a smallish spinning reel loaded with 30lb spectra. Here's the problem. I only had a 10lb mono leader. I can see the light brown back and wide outline of the fish as it's ripping my line off. I started to get worried when it showed no signs of slowing up. A few seconds more and I can see the spool through the little bit of line left. Now I am forced to apply more pressure. The fish is way out in the bay but, I manage to stop it and slowly work it back. It took me a solid 15 minutes to pull this fish to within 20 yards of where I was standing. Just when I felt confident that this fish was mine the line went slack! Bummed! I still had 15 minutes to fish so I threw a small blk/grn fishtrap and nailed two fat but, illegal halibut (19-20" each). There seemed to be a lot of bait swimming around. The tide was fairly high and rising.