Sea Lions and Halibut

Sea Lions and Halibut

David Sparks Ph.D.
David Sparks Ph.D.
Expert fisherman, Rob Maxey, tells me an unbelievable story. "Sea lions have gotten extremely bold. To the point where they are following boats and waiting for people to hook up a salmon and then chasing after it. There's nothing more frustrating than to have the rod go down and you are fighting a fish and all of a sudden it just takes off. You have to turn and follow the sea lion that has the fish and if you don't, he's going to break off and you will lose $25 worth of gear. There is more: "We have had problems as far as 30 miles offshore halibut fishing where sea lions would come up and darned near crawl into your boat. Halibut fishing in the deep water has a lot of special rules where you have to release red fish, there are certain types of fish you can keep an certain types you can't. Because the fish have the bends when they come up you have a special release mechanism where you drop them back down to depth where they recompress and they get a very good survival rate. That is one of the ways we have been able to keep fishing for the deep water fish. So when you haul the wrong species up inadvertently, I put them in the splash well in the back of my boat and took the descender up, so the back of my boat smells like fish. See lions smell at and pretty soon they are trying to climb into the back of your boat. They are trying to rip a fish out of your hand, they get very aggressive. Something else the sea lions, at Bonneville they are having problems with the sea lions. It is the sturgeon as much as the salmon. That's because everything is spawning there.
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