I was fly fishing for silvers(anything) wading around rich passage cause the wind and I walked out a little far almost to my chest and I'm 6-2. my waders suck there torn and leak but I was desperate. but I was to my chest and a sea lion popped up no more than 7 ft in front on me and just started at me doing the arrph. that sea donkey got me so scared. I quickly retreated to the shore. threw the leaky waders away and took another shot of my brew ha..have anybody ever had a nasty encounter with a sea lion? just shoot them all I say. Tight lines, Ben

My friend liked to row his river kayak out in Puget Sound down around Brown's Point, Point Defiance area. This was really rather stupid in and of itself because his kayak had no skirt to keep the Sound out...right about the time he polished off the banana he had brought with him (see fishing superstitions post) a sea lion on a nearby buoy grunted at him.

So my friend, using the same part of his brain that told him it was okay to go out without a skirt, hurled the banana peel and every expletive he could thinik of at the sea lion.

The sea lion responded by diving in to the Sound and surfacing near his boat, blowing sea lion snot all over him in the process.

I'm pretty sure this story as true as my buddy was pretty shaken up when he got home that night and relayed the story as well as having an even more peculiar funk than usual which I attributed to the snot blowing thing...

while fishing the Coronado islands off the coast of Bajai hooked a NICE Yellowtail probably 12-15lbs, get it up just enough to see the color on it then out of the shadows BAM!! Sealion on!!!! Needless to say the fish never came in.

The sad thing is that fish may have won the jackpot that day.

Tyler

While fishing off the Pribilof islands in alaska we had one feeding off our net as we were hauling back,actually several.One of the several decided it liked that easy meal and followd the cod end right up the ramp.At first this was kinda cute some thing differant but it soon became aperant who was in charge and it wasn't us deckhands!That thing chased us all over the trawl deck as we were trying to heard it bank the ramp.Captain got frustrated and come down out of the wheele house to show us how it was done and the damn thing nearly beat him to the wheel house,that included going up a level of a stairs.

Sea lions SUCK.Last summer in august after fishin
the bouy 10 area,I was cleaning our limits off the side of my boat in the hammond boat basin in my moorage spot.I would gut the fish and through the gut's in the water,then I would dip the salmon
in the drink a few times to rinse them off.After about the fourth of fifth time dipping the salmon
I all the sudden was in a tug-a-war with a sea lion.As this scared the $hit out of me.I realized
that I could have lost an arm or hand.I proceeded
to gut the fish and as I tossed the gut's over board I watched to see if I could see the sea lion
sure enough out from under the boat he came to inhale the gut's.I did this twice that same day.I will never clean/rinse my fish in the water like that again.It's called once bitten twice shy.I've solved the problem and installed a wash down system.Good luck,
STRIKE ZONE

A few years ago I was flyfishing for S.R.C. in the sound [Picnic Point] in my float tube, off shore a ways as some were jumping here and there. As I raised my rod to begin casting again there was this loud BLOOSH noise behind me. I turned to look and saw a LARGE boil in the water about 20 feet away. After I lowered myself back into my tube and shoved my heart out of my throat, I looked around and a sea lion slowly raised his head up on the other side of me from where the boil was. I think he went under me!! After he or she determined I was not good for food or sex the head slowly went back under the water. I just wish I knew what that sea lion thought about that big doughnut with fins and legs.

Was scuba diving out on a shore dive site on Alki. A place we called "WeatherWatch Park(er).

http://staff.washington.edu/parker/scuba/reviews/weatherwatch.html for those that are interested in the dive.

It's a huge eel-grass flats. At the end of the flats is the start of a nice slope that goes down well beyond 200'. After doing the dive, one follows a compass heading underwater and swims in the 10' eel grass shallows to shore. As my buddy and I were plodding along in the shallows, we were starteled as all hell when a massive bull sea lion put itself between us and the beach and would not let us pass! It would come right up to our face and bark and blow bubbles. As we all know, blowing bubbles is a sign of aggitation and aggression for sea lions. Didn't help much that we were on open-circuit scuba..hence all kinds of bubbles every time we breathed. (Where's the rebreathers when you need them???)

After about a 10 minute stand off, the sea lion finally went away and we were able to make it to shore. Scared the living snot out of us. You don't realize how slow and vulnerable you really are underwater until some massive animal dances around you like you were frozen. It could have easily killed us if it wanted to. Not a damn thing we could have done about it.

Needless to say, I have a great respect for all underwater critters - especially big and fast ones with really large/sharp teeth.

This is more about the sea lion that wasn't.

We were fishing SE Alaska in the '70s, pulled up a bag with about 200 fish and a mottled dark gray marine mammal. The skipper dumped the whole damn bag in the hatch instead of on deck.

His bonehead brother thinks it's a lost little baby sea lion, we try to tell him he's wrong, but he won't listen. It's a full grown harbor seal with 3/4" long teeth, needle sharp, and as soon as numbnuts reaches for it (he actually thinks he's gonna pick this 100lb. wad of toothy, writhing wet blubber up and lift it outta the hatch by himself) it turns on him and chases him around the fish hold in circles for about 30 seconds, growling viciously the whole time.

We were in hysterics, he was scared absolutely shiatless!

Had to pick the little bugger up in a brailer and dump him overboard. The seal, not numbnuts. If only.......

ltlcleo -
Ever pull up a dead seal or lion? ....Naaaasssstttty! Stunk up the whole factory!