06-25-2010, 04:59 PM
Quote:A seal in California, and got it too the boat.
You actually got it to the boat? That's intense!
I was vacationing in SanDiego earlier this year and went out on a fishing boat to catch yellow tail and barracuda. We were having a hard time keeping the bait on the hook due to the sea lions all day. We would reel in to check the bait and it'd be bit in half.
The day started real slow chasing yellow tail boils that for some reason weren't producing.
We finally found a big group of 'cuda at the edge of a kelp bed and parked over top of them the only problem we had was that the sea lions knew we were there and were not letting our bait get to the 'cudas before they would decide to have a sardine snack. If you were lucky enough to hook into a fish you had to reel real fast or the sea lions were biting them in half and all you'd get for your trouble was a 'cuda head.
I set the hook on a fish and it started peeling line off like crazy. I was stoked, I thought I was going to be the first one to land a big yellow tail that day. But after only about 20 seconds of it peeling line off a sea lion comes to the surface about 150 yards out with a huge(for that day) 'cuda in his mouth. He was taking my fish for a ride instead of biting it in half. About a minute passed while I jerked at the line trying to get the sea lion to lose his grip so that i could salvage a fish that looked to be still whole. But finally he chomped down hard and took the meaty half of the fish. I got the head to the boat and the cap't said that by the looks of the size of the head that fish probably would have been a 35-40" fish.
Oh well, I caught a couple decent whole 'cudas that day and have quite a story about the half of the fish that got away.
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