Decided to fish the noon tide change at Jeff Head and Point Monroe/Port Madison while the inside area is still open. Prior to the change we found the bait and the fish on the South side of Jeff Head, only problem was so did the seals. I have never encountered seals that were this bold. When we were able to get a shaker to the boat the seal would hang right behind the downrigger ball waiting for the release. I took the liberty of bending the rules about bringing a fish past the gunwale and released the fish on the opposite side of the boat to give it a fighting chance. After losing a couple of nice fish to the seals I get another great take down and a huge fight follows. Turns out we have a seal hooked on it’s right front flipper and it’s not too happy. We chased it around a bit and I really tested the backbone of my trolling rod for a good 15 minutes before it started to realize we weren’t going away. It went on a hard run at the surface and I really put on the pressure and it seemed to give up when it couldn’t shake us. We got close, almost touching distance, and gave it some slack to try and work the barbless hook loose which did the trick and we were rewarded with a return of all our gear. The only damage was to the 2/0 stock siwash hook on the kingfisher spoon, bent considerably, and my thumb was missing a few layers of skin. After the seal was released we ran to check the crab pots, no keeper dungies, and headed over to Port Madison. Dropped the pots and started trolling between Port Madison and Point Monroe in 100 to 140 feet of water. Picked up a keeper blackmouth and released a few shakers in about an hour and a half of fishing, with no seals in sight! Silver Horde 4” Kingfisher in the White Lightning pattern took the keeper and the Coho Killer in the same pattern took the shakers. I was using the 8” flashers today as I wasn’t having much luck with the 11” size lately. Our second haul of the pots yielded 3 oversized keeper dungies, and we were heading back to Shilshole by 2:00pm.
